Class Consciousness and Momentum

We're going to keep this one (kinda) short and oblique, folks! I don't want my door kicked in around the holidays, but I do want us to be thinking critically about recent events. It's a departure in subject matter for us, but honestly I think it relates, and it's probably time we expand our conversation, anyway. As I'm supposed to be on break, consider this your non-denominational holiday present from When/If.

My position on recent events should not shock you: I am very much in the camp of of the non-1%. Which, really, is why we need to talk about this today: this one event has created more momentum, and more unity, than virtually anything that has come before it in memory. We weren't so united against George W. Bush, nor, I think, we were even so united during the "Occupy" Movement. And while I don't think that we necessarily need to, or even can, build a whole movement off of this single act, I do think that it's important that we utilize it.

The thing is, the people in power are pushing back–hard. Hay has been made about who the suspect is, what he believes in, what he's said, where he's lived, as a way to divide the support that has been received. I don't care about these things. This is not a time to purity test an act that is already finished. Op-eds have come out decrying him, decrying the gloating of the public in the aftermath as a symptom of moral decay. Twitter-Libs are wringing their hands about the state of the world if we can empathize with such an act. While I think it is a rational person who says what was done, devoid of context, is unacceptable, I think having this argument devoid of context is exactly what the people who run this country would like us to do.

The context is this: the amount of money spent by Americans on cancer treatments denied by that insurance company is vast–in the tens of billions. And, as if this is related, the profits accrued by the very same company are well above that. That company leads US health insurers in denials, being far stricter than the industry average. To make things worse, they utilize an AI algorithm–that is wrong more often than not in its conclusions–to deny some claims. These denials kill people. Tens of thousands of people die each year because they can't afford healthcare outright, and thousands more die because they have insurance and their treatments are denied.

One of the first things that I read in the wake of this event-we're-not-naming was a piece in Vox about a recent Blue Cross Blue Shield move to cut off coverage for anesthesia for a procedure after a standardized amount of time. It wasn't pushing back on this move, no–it was pushing back on their reversal of this decision in the wake of the thing that happened. It went on about, effectively, the evils of overpaid anesthesiologists who bill past what they need to. Supposedly this push on BCBS's part would have curtailed this, and supposedly the unpaid-for anesthesia wouldn't somehow become the patient's responsibility, as if the charge would just get eaten by the hospital or something and never get passed to the other folks who don't have billions of dollars to make policy decisions like this.

But this is why we're talking about healthcare today, in the wake of the thing. The media, even outlets that we tend to trust, are largely bought and paid for by people who profit off the structure of our government, economy, and healthcare as they are made today. A threat to that is a threat to their bottom line, which is ultimately what makes these people get out of bed in the morning. The reason you're hearing about what virtues the US healthcare system has, what good CEOs do, how we can improve things but now's not the time, the weird shit the guy said or read, is to keep us from thinking about the unifying moment we all just had. And you're going to hear more like that. You're going to hear more about how other people are the real problem–immigrants burdening the system, or some such bullshit. Don't listen.

The problem with our healthcare system is the problem with our government: it is a capitalist system, meant to suck profit from what ought to be a human right. So long as we operate in a profit-driven model, leeches will exist to siphon from it: which gives us insurance companies. They provide no intrinsic value in the healthcare equation; they are merely a complication. People have correctly brought up Spain's healthcare system in comparison with ours: healthcare is a constitutionally-enshrined universal right provided by the government, with better and quicker outcomes than the United States by an appreciable amount. To spell that out a little more: most patients pay virtually nothing for their healthcare, they get it faster, and it's better than ours. Nothing about the capitalist model wins in these terms. The argument that the United States is far bigger than Spain sort of loses its efficacy when you look at how much bigger our budget is, and how much of it goes to bombs.

What everything boils down to is this: we had a moment of class consciousness in a country for which these moments are exceedingly rare. We should take advantage of this by keeping the conversation going–keep talking about how bad our system is, how unfair it is, and how clear it is that the people in power are worried about us having this lightning-strike of recognition and unity. This is a rare situation in which I think sharing memes is actually helpful–they provide an accessibility and consumability to ideas that would otherwise perhaps be indigestible.

When the conversation gets sidetracked by the media, bring it back on course. When the opportunity presents itself to expand the conversation, do so. I saw someone say that embracing the event would lead to anarchism, to which I and others responded "cool." Take those opportunities, even if they occur in places you don't imagine you'll gain much traction. This is a moment in which we can wedge our foot in a lot of doors. We don't have to make people fall all the way to the left of the political compass, just get them thinking about the possibility of alternatives. This is how we seize on this opportunity, and do so with minimal effort. (Of course I believe we should be doing more than this, but I also worry about talking about that in the public sphere. Use your better judgment!)