Photo by Tim Cooper
In his new Netflix special, entertainer Jamie Foxx shares that he suffered a debilitating stroke. The $4.5 trillion U.S. health care system at first failed to give him helpful treatment, which Foxx eventually received at a hospital in Atlanta.
Think about the class dimensions of his experience. Foxx is a multimillionaire who in his time of medical need got a cold shoulder from the American health care industry.
Where does that leave the majority of the U.S. working class who earn much, much less? Up a creek with no paddle is the short answer, financially speaking.
In fact, insurers denying necessary health care to patients with insurance is the business model of the industry. Much human suffering follows.
Meanwhile, money that insurers do not spend on patient care instead flows to the likes of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, gunned down in Manhattan recently. His murder is headline news, but the daily human toll from the industry’s business practices is not.
The contrast in press coverage is striking. Clearly, there are worthy and unworthy victims, as Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman detail in their book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988).
Since Thompson’s killing, the practices of the industry have been in the spotlight.
Corporations such as UnitedHealthcare deny care as a matter of course.
Every dollar a health care corporation avoids spending on patient care is another greenback for executives and shareholders. This business model is harmful, shifting dollars away from patient care and health providers.
Let us not forget that the daily working conditions of health providers are also the healing situations of patients. Labor has that connection to health care.
Those providing and receiving medical treatment are sources of profits for health care corporations. That is how the industry operates.
How will the continued denial of health care play out in the political system? The answer to that question could prove momentous.
Currently there is bipartisan support for the health care status quo that profits the industry at the expense of the American public. Think about the impacts of that for working-class Democratic, independent and Republican voters.
They are the losers, in brief. However, losers do not have to keep losing, politically speaking.
Accordingly, there are shared class interests relative to health care in the lived experiences of tens of millions of working class Americans along a so-called political divide. The possibilities are intriguing, in my view.
I see an opening for a new political formation that focuses on changing health care from its current state of a cash cow for private interests to one of a public service to improve Americans’ lives. One thing seems certain.
Overcoming the current status quo for health care will require the active involvement of more and more of the American people. Of course that will not occur overnight.
Popular movements for social progress take effort and time. The revolution, as observed well before the term woke saturated the U.S., will not be televised.
On that note, vested interests in the American ruling class will by any means necessary work to derail a system change for health care. That response is understandable.
There is a record of ruling class co-optation and oppression against popular movements for social justice (think of Occupy Wall Street and the Movement for Black Lives). Say what you will about the American ruling class of oligarchs and Empire, it is quite aware of its power and wealth and next steps to keep it.
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