Photograph Source: Marc Nozell from Merrimack, New Hampshire, USA – CC BY 2.0

We all know the story. Someone gets furious at the behavior of a health insurance company. Perhaps they are exceptionally irate at the words and actions that have come from the CEO and other leaders in the company. And then the moment of truth occurs and they take action.

By this I mean, a group of shareholders of United Healthcare filed suit in May of this year against the company. This action was in response to a drop in shareholder value of around 22% after the death of their CEO. The shareholders were angry and felt they’d been misled when the company indicated that there would be no change in their profit forecast after this event. However, the suing shareholders distinctly believe that UHC started approving a tiny bit more care in response to their CEO’s death. This harmed their finances, they say, and in a fit that can only be solved through litigation, they went after the company. In this case, the bottom line and health of those shareholders’ finances is inversely proportional to the health of the bag holders who dismally have UHC insurance. You see, the rules are that you pay through the nose for high premiums and just wither away if you get sick. It’s a poor tax. You don’t get to ask them to fulfill their end of the bargain.

United Healthcare was always a stand-out in the world of profiteering through misery, number one in denials and at the forefront of clanker denied care (by that I mean utilizing AI to deny physician recommended services as a first response). The fact that those shareholders were angry when there was a lessening of the denials is amazing because it’s not like they started approving all care that the physicians indicated was necessary. No, it appears it was simply a slight lessening of the unreasonableness. Kind of like Howard Hughes only sprays you with a 25% solution of bleach rather than the 28% solution when you enter his elevator to come visit him.

Now what kind of profits are we talking about in this world of corporate misery mining? Well in the year 2023 the US healthcare system expenditures tallied a grotesque 4.9 trillion (or $14, 570 per person). I say grotesque because that number does not really indicate “care”. It provides parasitic income to a vast number of middlemen, shareholders and general network of slime-ball ne’er do wells. It’s a system incredible in its cruelty, literally making money off the ill and infirm of society and the US is alone in seeing this human condition as “a profit-making opportunity”.

Many in the US are misguided and kept in the dark, of course. They think that this situation and lack of care are due to scarcity, when in fact this couldn’t be further from the truth. From 1979 to 2019 worker productivity in the US soared from 85-112%. Care was relatively accessible in 1979, while today it has become a luxury. Resources are there; the imposed scarcity is due to the ever-increasing greed we see at the top. Resources exist, but they are tied up by hoarders who need to have bridges dismantled for their yachts to fit through. People are working harder and harder for less and less. This is, of course, not a revelation to anyone paying attention, but millions of Americans do believe that we find ourselves in such straits due to anything but the root cause (oligarchs and unfettered greed). They believe immigrants are taking the healthcare or any other number of mass media/politician produces hoaxes that they swallow up.

The drive to privatize everything, at best, leads to less quality and more expense for the individual, and at its worst, leads to outright fraud and criminal behavior. This was the case in the privatized prison system when judges would take kickbacks to supply the youth prisons with bodies. Some aspects of human life–say liberty, health and safety should never have become a realm for the greedy to leech off of. But here we are.

I have worked in the healthcare arena for many years. It’s difficult to describe certain things due to privacy laws, but I have a story, though that’s always haunted me. It isn’t personally identifiable so we should be good. I think her story is important and I believe it clearly illustrates some of the misery being peddled out there.

There was a woman working in one of the chain restaurants–you would all recognize the name. She was not old, not young. She was in that middle-aged era that can give way to drudgery in a poor economy. The gloss of the world has lost its shine and life’s difficulties pile up. All of this in the setting of manual labor starting to take its toll. Joints ache–it’s harder not to feel tired all the time. She worked as a server at this mega-chain restaurant, on her feet all manner of the day, scraping for enough to get by. She did not have health insurance as they made sure her hours were such that they could claim to provide insurance, but kept most employees a microsecond below that level. They used this trick or made the hours so erratic that the person never quite hit the “benefit requirements”. So, not having insurance, she did not investigate the gnawing pain in her abdomen. She just kept taking aspirin for it. More and more aspirin to mask the pain and to be able to keep working. This went on for a couple of years and the massive aspirin consumption did what it usually does. It caused a gastrointestinal bleed, and for that, she had no choice but to go the avenue of last resort for the uninsured, the local Emergency Department. The bleed was investigated and in so doing, massive metastatic disease was found. The cancer was at the point that nothing really could be done; it was so far gone. She became another casualty of the profit system. But that chain restaurant continues to make lovely profits well in excess of what it would have taken to provide some insurance for her. Now take this anecdote and multiply it times…what? Thousands and thousands?

It’s hard to know how much misery is out there from this institutional cruelty. The system chugs along, making a handful of people so wealthy that they wouldn’t run out of money if they literally set hundreds of dollars on fire every moment for the rest of their lives.

The fact that insurance is even tied to employment in the US is in itself a method to stifle worker autonomy. Of course, it should be an expectation of being a citizen of your nation. You never hear right-wingers complain about a socialist military they pay taxes to fund, but allocating dollars for the care of your fellow citizens is considered off the table. They’ve been brainwashed, and they can’t even afford to schedule a healthcare visit to get an MRI to show the washed and smooth areas.

But these victims have families; they have friends, those who love them. Their life is worth every bit as much as the Peter Thiels and Elon Musks out there. The loss of life of one of their own such as the UHC CEO is treated like the end of civilized society while the countless lives lost in the manner above……. well, they are simply statistics.

It opens up enormous questions, that of what is the inherent worth of a human being and don’t we have the duty to assist each other in a civilized society? I think most people down deep know that we do have that responsibility. Having that reciprocity actually benefits us all. It’s not healthy to carry such deep disdain for others. Look to our oligarchs and their mental health challenges on display daily to see that accumulating wealth and denying others does not make one ever feel settled and calm. Deep down, they probably know that the hatred they have for others is laser-focused back at them and instead of working on decency, they double down on their sickness, that of greed and resource gluttony.

The “Happiness Report” looks to a myriad of details in citizens’ lives to find those who are actually enjoying their time here on earth. And not the least bit shocking, the nations that are at the top prioritize the well-being of their fellow citizens. Six of the seven top nations are all from Northern Europe, where it simply isn’t tolerable to implement a winner-take-all all, no safety-net society.

Why would Americans be so arrogant as to believe their system is inherently better when it can’t even produce a basic product, that of happy people? It’s absurd to keep listening to those who continue to pitch misery as their selling point, while even they are miserable.

Through all of this, we find ourselves at a time when greed has become completely unsustainable. The misery is as exponential as the oligarch’s wealth. But in the words of Percy Bysshe Shelley, “ye are many, they are few”. It’s time we acted like it.

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