The now-disgraced Noam Chomsky said as much. “Gentlemen’s agreements’ are the only thing that prevented executive abuse, as we have seen time and again. James K. Polk invaded a country to add slave states, and it just got worse from there. We had Harding and Nixon. We had Boss Tweed and the Gilded Age. But what we see now is so, so much worse. We’ve also destroyed the planet, and that will imperil every living mammal on it. Conspiracy and incompetence look very similar, but the greed and fear is a constant.
We have the idea of four-year college so people can get a job that has insurance. Both of them drain income and funnel it not only to the CEOs, but to the wholly unregulated anonymous private equity firms who own an increasing portion of everything from commercial real estate to restaurant groups. This ensures that every purchase funnels more and more to the same tiny group of people who already own everything. Chomsky said they operate on a simple maxim: everything for me, nothing for you. All their activities from unavoidable student loan payments to return-to-office policies comply to this simple litmus test.
Abuse of power isn’t new, from James K. Polk to Richard Nixon but what feels different now is the scale and structure. Financialization and private equity concentrate ownership in ways that are diffuse, opaque, and constant. Healthcare tied to jobs, student debt as a gateway to stability,those systems reliably funnel money upward.
I’d just be cautious about framing it as a single coordinated conspiracy. Often it’s not secret masterminds but incentives: greed, fear, quarterly profits, institutional cowardice. The outcome can look the same either way.
The real question isn’t whether greed exists. It’s whether democratic institutions,and citizens,can still restrain it.
I missed something about Noam Chomsky, but I'll look it up and see what shakes out. He's quite the intellectual giant, I know that much ("intellectual", not being an automatic cuss word where I come from).
Tom, your article reaches me to the core and narrow of my bones. You are a very empathetic man. I know. I can spot one from a thousand or several thousand miles away. As the saying goes, it takes one to know one.
Your wife and mine work in different fields, but the same front lines. Yours is a nurse, mine is a professional social justice advocate, which is actually code that I've deemed necessary for her protection. Or discretion. Or mine. Whatever. I'm 67, she'll be 61 next month. And yes, we both see and say the same thing, though it may be slightly different lingo. And yes, she saw it coming decades before I did, before we even met, actually.
And I was a street protester in my youth, fighting against what I called (and still do call) the "out of Vietnam, into Chile" era, when the draft was repealed and what happened in Chile was met with a collective shrug, not mass rallies on the National Mall and college campuses. She *still* saw it coming before I did.
But we agree: the system isn't broken, it's working perfectly - for the millionaires and billionaires. And, my wife is a Black woman. This is actually my second marriage - to a Black woman. I was widowed from the first. Yes, I saw the health care system work perfectly against her, too. I hate to say I was complicit in her death, too, but I can't entirely dismiss that. But I digress...
Our numbers are growing, and growing fast...for this deceptively backward country we live in. Understanding with the same language, organizing in overlapping and multifaceted ways both above ground and underground - both approaches absolutely necessary. I take some heart in that. The question is, are our numbers and organizing growing quickly and effectively enough? I guess we'll see.
I also agree: voting is what we do *after* we've organized and pressured the system and its operators enough to lay the groundwork for candidates or incumbents who will do what's right - under needed, relentless pressure. Organize, then vote - not the other way around. Lesson learned, the hard way. Again, praying it's not too late. That's possibly the best summary of what voting can and can't do that I've come across. Your wife is a wise woman. As is mine.
I'll have to read this over again. And I will certainly be in touch. All the best to you and Patricia! Keep up the prayers, and the good fight. Both. 🙏🙏
There’s a particular kind of clarity that comes from standing next to someone on the front lines for decades,whether it’s a hospital floor or the long, grinding work of justice. Your wife sounds like one of those people who saw the weather changing before the clouds formed. Patricia is like that too. I’ve learned to trust that kind of vision.
I’m especially moved by what you shared about your first wife. The way the health care system can fail Black women isn’t abstract to you,it’s personal. That kind of loss reshapes a person. Please don’t carry complicit blame that belongs to institutions designed to ration care and dignity. Loving someone inside a broken incentive structure isn’t complicity. It’s survival.
I hear your history too,”out of Vietnam, into Chile.” That quiet pivot from mass protest to selective outrage marked a lot of us. Some of us saw it late. Some never saw it at all. The important thing is that you did,and that you’re still here.
You’re right: organizing is the groundwork. Voting is the pressure valve, not the engine. It works when it’s backed by structure, relationships, persistence. Otherwise it’s ritual.
Are we growing fast enough? I don’t know. But I do know this: people who once felt alone are finding each other. Language is aligning. Networks are forming. That matters.
Give my respect to your wife. The wise ones often carry more than the rest of us understand.
And thank you,for reading deeply, for living honestly, and for staying in the fight. Prayers and pressure. Both.
Man...shaking my head in recognition as I read this, and I did read your article a second time. I kinda knew you would tell me not to carry the blame, and I appreciate it, and in my core, I know. We have got to keep in touch, man. I'll let my wife know.
I got stuck on the 437 thousand. I spent five weeks in hospital 20 years ago and it cost me nothing directly, I had coverage because there is social medicine in the country in which I live. My life is of value and it will be cared for. I continue to have a chronic illness that is treated with a medicine that would cost me more or less $700 a month were I to have to pay for it, but again, that cost is covered because I paid taxes and those monies were put into the social health system. I'm alive because of the social health system. Had this happened to me in the USA I would probably not have survived. The social health service here works for everyone, the US health system works for those who can pay and those who can become a collectable debt.
I "discovered" Jesse Welles just about a year ago. The first song of his that caught my eye was one called "I ain't got none of my friends left". Liking the tone of that song, I listened to a variety of his music, among which is the song "United Health". While the lyrics are sharp and critical, that which most hits me when I listen to this song, this version sung in some small club (link at the end of this comment), is how the crowd reacts when Welles sings "Now CEOs come and go / and one just went". It is heart-wrenching.
I'm of the opinion that we all finally have to live through some form of world-wide hell in our lives. For some it is mass school shootings; for others it is endless war in some harsh foreign land; for others it was Civil Rights; for others it was Vietnam; for others the Korean "Police Action"; they are becoming fewer, but there are still those who had to live alongside of WWII. These are our times, this is our hell. Might be able to do something to make it better for the ones on the way up, but it sure looks hard, doesn't it?
Thanks to Tom for encouraging people to participate. He'll end up being listened to, even if it is only one person, save the life of one and you save a world.
The 437,000 hits me too. It’s such a sterile number for something so human.
What you describe,five weeks in the hospital, a $700 medication covered because you paid into a social system,is what a functioning social contract looks like. Your life was treated as inherently valuable. In the U.S., too often, care is filtered through billing codes and debt collection. It’s a market first, a mercy second.
I know the United Health song by Jesse Welles. That crowd reaction you mention isn’t celebration,it’s exhaustion. People are tired of feeling priced.
Every generation gets its reckoning. This may be ours. It does look hard. But comparison, conversation, participation,that’s how inevitability starts to crack.
All of this is 100% right. The US Healthcare System is the most devastating and murderous of our systems. It is not the only one. Using "healthcare" is the biggest lie. It is the billing for procedures, CYA, and maintenance prescriptions of pharmaceuticals-- business as usual and customary. There are plenty of good-hearted healers, such as your wife, Patricia.
What I am going to do is to help fund writers like you, fund journalists, show up at marches, bail out my kid and their friends if they get arrested for marching, and vote I. Primaries - though usually not generals, (as I have a hard red line on genocide, marginality be damned.)
As usual, I am in 100% agreement with the premise of your article, and I have thought this for many, many years. The system is, in fact, working exactly as it is supposed to. And it is killing the masses or putting them into unrelenting debt. Your solutions work for those lucky few of a certain age, but unless the under 40 generations get it and break this crushing hold on our medical system, it will continue being the status quo. Those are the people who we must reach and embolden them to break the system that has held us all hostage since this all became a for profit mega industry.
I agree younger generations understand this deeply. Many of them are living the worst of it,debt, gig work, medical bills that feel like extortion. But this can’t rest on their shoulders alone. They didn’t build this machine.
Real change will take all of us. Younger people bring urgency and fearlessness. Older generations bring numbers and political leverage. If we don’t act together, the for-profit model will keep grinding exactly as it was built to do.
I worked in medical systems for over 40 years and at times had no health insurance myself. But I managed. Unfortunately many of my patients were not able to manage medical care , housing , basic living expenses. I experienced it with my student loans , trying to find safe housing and definitely not being able to retire when I physically needed to. I did not retire until I was 76 years old and my body was wrecked. And I’ve been one of the lucky ones.
I agree.
The system is working exactly how it was set up to work.
Forty years. That's a hell of a career, and I'm grateful people like you were out there doing that work.
The fact that you didn't have health insurance at times while you were taking care of everyone else,that's the story right there, isn't it? You see it from the inside. You know exactly who the system leaves behind because you were taking care of them. And sometimes you were one of them.
Seventy-six years old when you finally got to stop. I'm glad you made it to retirement, but damn, you earned that about a decade earlier at least.
You're absolutely right,the system's doing what it was built to do. Once you see that, you can't unsee it. And then the question becomes: what do we do about it?
Thank you for taking the time to read this and for sharing your story. Voices like yours,people who've been in it, who've seen it from every angle,that's what helps other people understand what's really going on.
Take care of yourself. You've more than earned it.
"Our comfort is built on someone else’s suffering. We are complicit."
Yes.
Like you, I've managed to work my way into a modest nest egg. I kept it in mutual funds.
Then, I looked at the companies I was "supporting" with my investment, and I didn't like what I saw. I decided to switch to so-called "socially responsible" mutual funds. I'll name them: Parnassus, and PAX World Fund.
I gave myself a good pat on the back, and put up with slightly less return on my investment than I had been getting with a combination of growth and income funds.
Time went by. They sent me lots of paper once or twice a year. I put it in a folder.
Then, one day, I looked it over. It contained a breakdown of where they directed my investments.
40% was "invested" in health care.
*I* was the person between the woman at Walgreens and the insulin she needed to be healthy.
*I* was the reason Maria is out there somewhere, still walking around with a blocked artery.
*I* was the reason Patricia's three stents cost your insurance company nearly half-a-million dollars.
All while thinking I was being "socially responsible". It said so, right on the mail they sent me!
After the second Dubya (s)election in 2004, I thought things couldn't get any worse. I had my immigration paperwork in to Canada by the end of the year.
Things keep getting worse.
Needless to say, I could not stomach being a "socially responsible" investor. I put my money into a combination of municipal bonds and certificates of deposit. With a bit of Social Security, I can live in a modest cabin, but can't really afford travel, or wine or whisky. And if the idiot king takes Social Security away, I'll have to dip into the principal.
I lived in the US for fifteen months a few years ago. I broke my wrist while rollerblading at a rink, while dodging a pre-teen girl who had zoomed in front of me and fallen. They could not reduce it in the ER, and recommended surgery.
The surgeon was able to "work me into his schedule" the next day. He did a good job, and I can't really tell anything happened without looking at the eight centimetre (3") scar.
Then, the bills started rolling in. I only have Medicare, which only pays 80% of "customary" medical bill amounts. The total wound up totalling over US$80,000, of which, I had to pay about US$4,000.
Case in point: at my four-week follow-up, they took me out of the sling and put a wrist brace on me. It was indistinguishable from one you can buy in any pharmacy for $19.95. I got a bill for it for $185 — not including the cost of putting it on me, which was in a separate bill! Medicare paid 80%, and I was stuck paying $37 for something that retails for $20.
Somewhere, someone with a "socially responsible" mutual fund is opening their statement and grinning, feeling good about their social responsibility.
I told my Canadian doctor the story, and showed him the x-rays. He said such a thing would only be C$12,000 to C$15,000 — "$20,000 tops" — in Canada.
So perhaps you need to attack the beast at its roots: a divestment drive. Get everyone to stop "investing" in [strike]health[/strike] wealth care.
It's good that you're seeing it for what it is. Doesn't matter how long it takes someone to see it. Just that they do. Incidentally, Tom, if you don't already read The Peaceful Revolutionary here on Substack, I highly recommend it.
“Then I looked at her and I knew”. When each of us have those extraordinary ordinary moments it’s what we DO that matters, that affects the rest of our lives. I’m glad you called 911, that you didn’t wait for Patricia to ask or tell you…or decide to wait until it got worse.
The complacency of way too many not voting Nov 2024 is why we’re all living in this abhorrent shit show. The Biden $35 insulin was a life changer for many I know. The news tells us of people killed on streets or relocated to destinations unknown yet not the thousands (if not more) who can’t afford medical care, housing and have/will die due to the current TEMPORARY administration.
You’re right,those “extraordinary ordinary” moments are everything. History doesn’t always turn on speeches or headlines. Sometimes it turns because someone decides not to look away. Because someone makes the call. Because someone refuses to wait.
I didn’t call 911 because I’m brave. I called because in that split second I knew that doing nothing would stay with me longer than doing something. That’s the choice we keep facing, over and over again,in hospital rooms, in pharmacies, in voting booths.
And yes, the insulin cap mattered. Policies matter. Elections matter. People staying home mattered. We are living with the consequences of complacency and cruelty braided together.
But what you’re also naming,and what I keep coming back to,is this: even inside systems that are failing people, individual choices still ripple. We can’t control all of it. But we can refuse indifference.
Yes, that split second wasn’t about bravery…it was about doing something that otherwise would have haunted you forever. Same for driving four hours without hesitation. The choices (or not) we each make matter. We can’t control everything but we can can control the choices we each make. I’m hoping more people are realizing this. Yes Yes Yes, refusal is where change begins.
“The Democrats are better,” she says. “Marginally better. They’ll throw you a rope while Republicans push you underwater. But neither party is going to dismantle the system that requires your drowning. So we vote for Democrats to buy time. And we organize to change what’s possible. Both.”
I need a second comment! It is up to us Tom, to speak the truth. These lies about our systems, justice, exec power, "capitalism", even democracy. I have been chastised for two years for talking about words such as democracy and a republic because they are too abstract for real Americans. Bull!!! I will not give up. I know you won't either. I'm seeing ANOTHER surgeon on Monday. I already recommend you. You do too for me. Please share Tom, me and other truth tellers widely and often. Lucid by Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Timothy Snyder, Jason Stanely, -- i cite and embed links every week.
They always say words like democracy, republic, rule of law, fascism, are “too abstract.” What they really mean is: please stop naming what’s happening.
There is nothing abstract about losing bodily autonomy. Nothing abstract about executive overreach. Nothing abstract about medical debt, voter suppression, or courts being stacked.
The work of people like Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Timothy Snyder, and Jason Stanley proves that language matters. Authoritarians depend on exhaustion and euphemism. They depend on people being embarrassed to use clear words.
You are not wrong to keep using them.
And I won’t stop either.
We amplify each other because that’s how this works now,not through institutions, but through networks of people who refuse to look away. Share widely. Cite fiercely. Keep naming it plainly.
And Monday,I’m wishing you steady hands, sharp minds, and good news from that surgeon. Keep me posted.
The now-disgraced Noam Chomsky said as much. “Gentlemen’s agreements’ are the only thing that prevented executive abuse, as we have seen time and again. James K. Polk invaded a country to add slave states, and it just got worse from there. We had Harding and Nixon. We had Boss Tweed and the Gilded Age. But what we see now is so, so much worse. We’ve also destroyed the planet, and that will imperil every living mammal on it. Conspiracy and incompetence look very similar, but the greed and fear is a constant.
We have the idea of four-year college so people can get a job that has insurance. Both of them drain income and funnel it not only to the CEOs, but to the wholly unregulated anonymous private equity firms who own an increasing portion of everything from commercial real estate to restaurant groups. This ensures that every purchase funnels more and more to the same tiny group of people who already own everything. Chomsky said they operate on a simple maxim: everything for me, nothing for you. All their activities from unavoidable student loan payments to return-to-office policies comply to this simple litmus test.
Abuse of power isn’t new, from James K. Polk to Richard Nixon but what feels different now is the scale and structure. Financialization and private equity concentrate ownership in ways that are diffuse, opaque, and constant. Healthcare tied to jobs, student debt as a gateway to stability,those systems reliably funnel money upward.
I’d just be cautious about framing it as a single coordinated conspiracy. Often it’s not secret masterminds but incentives: greed, fear, quarterly profits, institutional cowardice. The outcome can look the same either way.
The real question isn’t whether greed exists. It’s whether democratic institutions,and citizens,can still restrain it.
I missed something about Noam Chomsky, but I'll look it up and see what shakes out. He's quite the intellectual giant, I know that much ("intellectual", not being an automatic cuss word where I come from).
Oh, actually, I see it. That didn't take long. "Friendship with Jeffrey Epstein", in Wikipedia. Will investigate further {sigh!}
how can the insurance companies get away with the claim that reform is "complicated"?
Every other developed nation in the world manages to work it out...
It's only complicated because they make it confusing - for us, on purpose. To make us think we're the confused ones.
We need to ask them: "complicated as opposed to *what*?"
Tom, your article reaches me to the core and narrow of my bones. You are a very empathetic man. I know. I can spot one from a thousand or several thousand miles away. As the saying goes, it takes one to know one.
Your wife and mine work in different fields, but the same front lines. Yours is a nurse, mine is a professional social justice advocate, which is actually code that I've deemed necessary for her protection. Or discretion. Or mine. Whatever. I'm 67, she'll be 61 next month. And yes, we both see and say the same thing, though it may be slightly different lingo. And yes, she saw it coming decades before I did, before we even met, actually.
And I was a street protester in my youth, fighting against what I called (and still do call) the "out of Vietnam, into Chile" era, when the draft was repealed and what happened in Chile was met with a collective shrug, not mass rallies on the National Mall and college campuses. She *still* saw it coming before I did.
But we agree: the system isn't broken, it's working perfectly - for the millionaires and billionaires. And, my wife is a Black woman. This is actually my second marriage - to a Black woman. I was widowed from the first. Yes, I saw the health care system work perfectly against her, too. I hate to say I was complicit in her death, too, but I can't entirely dismiss that. But I digress...
Our numbers are growing, and growing fast...for this deceptively backward country we live in. Understanding with the same language, organizing in overlapping and multifaceted ways both above ground and underground - both approaches absolutely necessary. I take some heart in that. The question is, are our numbers and organizing growing quickly and effectively enough? I guess we'll see.
I also agree: voting is what we do *after* we've organized and pressured the system and its operators enough to lay the groundwork for candidates or incumbents who will do what's right - under needed, relentless pressure. Organize, then vote - not the other way around. Lesson learned, the hard way. Again, praying it's not too late. That's possibly the best summary of what voting can and can't do that I've come across. Your wife is a wise woman. As is mine.
I'll have to read this over again. And I will certainly be in touch. All the best to you and Patricia! Keep up the prayers, and the good fight. Both. 🙏🙏
This means more than you know.
There’s a particular kind of clarity that comes from standing next to someone on the front lines for decades,whether it’s a hospital floor or the long, grinding work of justice. Your wife sounds like one of those people who saw the weather changing before the clouds formed. Patricia is like that too. I’ve learned to trust that kind of vision.
I’m especially moved by what you shared about your first wife. The way the health care system can fail Black women isn’t abstract to you,it’s personal. That kind of loss reshapes a person. Please don’t carry complicit blame that belongs to institutions designed to ration care and dignity. Loving someone inside a broken incentive structure isn’t complicity. It’s survival.
I hear your history too,”out of Vietnam, into Chile.” That quiet pivot from mass protest to selective outrage marked a lot of us. Some of us saw it late. Some never saw it at all. The important thing is that you did,and that you’re still here.
You’re right: organizing is the groundwork. Voting is the pressure valve, not the engine. It works when it’s backed by structure, relationships, persistence. Otherwise it’s ritual.
Are we growing fast enough? I don’t know. But I do know this: people who once felt alone are finding each other. Language is aligning. Networks are forming. That matters.
Give my respect to your wife. The wise ones often carry more than the rest of us understand.
And thank you,for reading deeply, for living honestly, and for staying in the fight. Prayers and pressure. Both.
Man...shaking my head in recognition as I read this, and I did read your article a second time. I kinda knew you would tell me not to carry the blame, and I appreciate it, and in my core, I know. We have got to keep in touch, man. I'll let my wife know.
Have a great day Wayne!!
I would call it a “ health care- less system. It’s for profit and the less they spend to treat you, the more they pocket.
In Oregon we are organizing towards a social health system, and may be the first in this country to set a model. Fingers crossed we figure this out.
We’re an aging population that needs care and quality food.
That would be wonderful if they could get that done.
Hey.
I got stuck on the 437 thousand. I spent five weeks in hospital 20 years ago and it cost me nothing directly, I had coverage because there is social medicine in the country in which I live. My life is of value and it will be cared for. I continue to have a chronic illness that is treated with a medicine that would cost me more or less $700 a month were I to have to pay for it, but again, that cost is covered because I paid taxes and those monies were put into the social health system. I'm alive because of the social health system. Had this happened to me in the USA I would probably not have survived. The social health service here works for everyone, the US health system works for those who can pay and those who can become a collectable debt.
I "discovered" Jesse Welles just about a year ago. The first song of his that caught my eye was one called "I ain't got none of my friends left". Liking the tone of that song, I listened to a variety of his music, among which is the song "United Health". While the lyrics are sharp and critical, that which most hits me when I listen to this song, this version sung in some small club (link at the end of this comment), is how the crowd reacts when Welles sings "Now CEOs come and go / and one just went". It is heart-wrenching.
I'm of the opinion that we all finally have to live through some form of world-wide hell in our lives. For some it is mass school shootings; for others it is endless war in some harsh foreign land; for others it was Civil Rights; for others it was Vietnam; for others the Korean "Police Action"; they are becoming fewer, but there are still those who had to live alongside of WWII. These are our times, this is our hell. Might be able to do something to make it better for the ones on the way up, but it sure looks hard, doesn't it?
Thanks to Tom for encouraging people to participate. He'll end up being listened to, even if it is only one person, save the life of one and you save a world.
Cheers!
revel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-8OTQaHiRI
Revel-
The 437,000 hits me too. It’s such a sterile number for something so human.
What you describe,five weeks in the hospital, a $700 medication covered because you paid into a social system,is what a functioning social contract looks like. Your life was treated as inherently valuable. In the U.S., too often, care is filtered through billing codes and debt collection. It’s a market first, a mercy second.
I know the United Health song by Jesse Welles. That crowd reaction you mention isn’t celebration,it’s exhaustion. People are tired of feeling priced.
Every generation gets its reckoning. This may be ours. It does look hard. But comparison, conversation, participation,that’s how inevitability starts to crack.
I’m glad you’re still here. Truly.
All of this is 100% right. The US Healthcare System is the most devastating and murderous of our systems. It is not the only one. Using "healthcare" is the biggest lie. It is the billing for procedures, CYA, and maintenance prescriptions of pharmaceuticals-- business as usual and customary. There are plenty of good-hearted healers, such as your wife, Patricia.
What I am going to do is to help fund writers like you, fund journalists, show up at marches, bail out my kid and their friends if they get arrested for marching, and vote I. Primaries - though usually not generals, (as I have a hard red line on genocide, marginality be damned.)
This one made me weep.
Al we can do is what we can do!!
As usual, I am in 100% agreement with the premise of your article, and I have thought this for many, many years. The system is, in fact, working exactly as it is supposed to. And it is killing the masses or putting them into unrelenting debt. Your solutions work for those lucky few of a certain age, but unless the under 40 generations get it and break this crushing hold on our medical system, it will continue being the status quo. Those are the people who we must reach and embolden them to break the system that has held us all hostage since this all became a for profit mega industry.
I agree younger generations understand this deeply. Many of them are living the worst of it,debt, gig work, medical bills that feel like extortion. But this can’t rest on their shoulders alone. They didn’t build this machine.
Real change will take all of us. Younger people bring urgency and fearlessness. Older generations bring numbers and political leverage. If we don’t act together, the for-profit model will keep grinding exactly as it was built to do.
It won’t reform itself.
While of course murder is never o.k., the popular enthusiasm for Luigi is understandable. Unfortunately, there's just another CEO getting rich off denying healthcare. This is a great explanation of a possible solution: https://open.substack.com/pub/cmarmitage/p/what-would-happen-if-a-state-banned?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
I worked in medical systems for over 40 years and at times had no health insurance myself. But I managed. Unfortunately many of my patients were not able to manage medical care , housing , basic living expenses. I experienced it with my student loans , trying to find safe housing and definitely not being able to retire when I physically needed to. I did not retire until I was 76 years old and my body was wrecked. And I’ve been one of the lucky ones.
I agree.
The system is working exactly how it was set up to work.
Thank you for writing this.
Forty years. That's a hell of a career, and I'm grateful people like you were out there doing that work.
The fact that you didn't have health insurance at times while you were taking care of everyone else,that's the story right there, isn't it? You see it from the inside. You know exactly who the system leaves behind because you were taking care of them. And sometimes you were one of them.
Seventy-six years old when you finally got to stop. I'm glad you made it to retirement, but damn, you earned that about a decade earlier at least.
You're absolutely right,the system's doing what it was built to do. Once you see that, you can't unsee it. And then the question becomes: what do we do about it?
Thank you for taking the time to read this and for sharing your story. Voices like yours,people who've been in it, who've seen it from every angle,that's what helps other people understand what's really going on.
Take care of yourself. You've more than earned it.
Tom
If I lived in the States, I'd be dead. Without a doubt. And all so the billionaires can become trillionaires while watching people like me die.
"Our comfort is built on someone else’s suffering. We are complicit."
Yes.
Like you, I've managed to work my way into a modest nest egg. I kept it in mutual funds.
Then, I looked at the companies I was "supporting" with my investment, and I didn't like what I saw. I decided to switch to so-called "socially responsible" mutual funds. I'll name them: Parnassus, and PAX World Fund.
I gave myself a good pat on the back, and put up with slightly less return on my investment than I had been getting with a combination of growth and income funds.
Time went by. They sent me lots of paper once or twice a year. I put it in a folder.
Then, one day, I looked it over. It contained a breakdown of where they directed my investments.
40% was "invested" in health care.
*I* was the person between the woman at Walgreens and the insulin she needed to be healthy.
*I* was the reason Maria is out there somewhere, still walking around with a blocked artery.
*I* was the reason Patricia's three stents cost your insurance company nearly half-a-million dollars.
All while thinking I was being "socially responsible". It said so, right on the mail they sent me!
After the second Dubya (s)election in 2004, I thought things couldn't get any worse. I had my immigration paperwork in to Canada by the end of the year.
Things keep getting worse.
Needless to say, I could not stomach being a "socially responsible" investor. I put my money into a combination of municipal bonds and certificates of deposit. With a bit of Social Security, I can live in a modest cabin, but can't really afford travel, or wine or whisky. And if the idiot king takes Social Security away, I'll have to dip into the principal.
I lived in the US for fifteen months a few years ago. I broke my wrist while rollerblading at a rink, while dodging a pre-teen girl who had zoomed in front of me and fallen. They could not reduce it in the ER, and recommended surgery.
The surgeon was able to "work me into his schedule" the next day. He did a good job, and I can't really tell anything happened without looking at the eight centimetre (3") scar.
Then, the bills started rolling in. I only have Medicare, which only pays 80% of "customary" medical bill amounts. The total wound up totalling over US$80,000, of which, I had to pay about US$4,000.
Case in point: at my four-week follow-up, they took me out of the sling and put a wrist brace on me. It was indistinguishable from one you can buy in any pharmacy for $19.95. I got a bill for it for $185 — not including the cost of putting it on me, which was in a separate bill! Medicare paid 80%, and I was stuck paying $37 for something that retails for $20.
Somewhere, someone with a "socially responsible" mutual fund is opening their statement and grinning, feeling good about their social responsibility.
I told my Canadian doctor the story, and showed him the x-rays. He said such a thing would only be C$12,000 to C$15,000 — "$20,000 tops" — in Canada.
So perhaps you need to attack the beast at its roots: a divestment drive. Get everyone to stop "investing" in [strike]health[/strike] wealth care.
It's good that you're seeing it for what it is. Doesn't matter how long it takes someone to see it. Just that they do. Incidentally, Tom, if you don't already read The Peaceful Revolutionary here on Substack, I highly recommend it.
Thanks. I’ll check them out!!
“Then I looked at her and I knew”. When each of us have those extraordinary ordinary moments it’s what we DO that matters, that affects the rest of our lives. I’m glad you called 911, that you didn’t wait for Patricia to ask or tell you…or decide to wait until it got worse.
The complacency of way too many not voting Nov 2024 is why we’re all living in this abhorrent shit show. The Biden $35 insulin was a life changer for many I know. The news tells us of people killed on streets or relocated to destinations unknown yet not the thousands (if not more) who can’t afford medical care, housing and have/will die due to the current TEMPORARY administration.
Thank you for this.
You’re right,those “extraordinary ordinary” moments are everything. History doesn’t always turn on speeches or headlines. Sometimes it turns because someone decides not to look away. Because someone makes the call. Because someone refuses to wait.
I didn’t call 911 because I’m brave. I called because in that split second I knew that doing nothing would stay with me longer than doing something. That’s the choice we keep facing, over and over again,in hospital rooms, in pharmacies, in voting booths.
And yes, the insulin cap mattered. Policies matter. Elections matter. People staying home mattered. We are living with the consequences of complacency and cruelty braided together.
But what you’re also naming,and what I keep coming back to,is this: even inside systems that are failing people, individual choices still ripple. We can’t control all of it. But we can refuse indifference.
That refusal is where change begins.
Yes, that split second wasn’t about bravery…it was about doing something that otherwise would have haunted you forever. Same for driving four hours without hesitation. The choices (or not) we each make matter. We can’t control everything but we can can control the choices we each make. I’m hoping more people are realizing this. Yes Yes Yes, refusal is where change begins.
“The Democrats are better,” she says. “Marginally better. They’ll throw you a rope while Republicans push you underwater. But neither party is going to dismantle the system that requires your drowning. So we vote for Democrats to buy time. And we organize to change what’s possible. Both.”
I need a second comment! It is up to us Tom, to speak the truth. These lies about our systems, justice, exec power, "capitalism", even democracy. I have been chastised for two years for talking about words such as democracy and a republic because they are too abstract for real Americans. Bull!!! I will not give up. I know you won't either. I'm seeing ANOTHER surgeon on Monday. I already recommend you. You do too for me. Please share Tom, me and other truth tellers widely and often. Lucid by Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Timothy Snyder, Jason Stanely, -- i cite and embed links every week.
Ruth, you’re exactly right.
They always say words like democracy, republic, rule of law, fascism, are “too abstract.” What they really mean is: please stop naming what’s happening.
There is nothing abstract about losing bodily autonomy. Nothing abstract about executive overreach. Nothing abstract about medical debt, voter suppression, or courts being stacked.
The work of people like Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Timothy Snyder, and Jason Stanley proves that language matters. Authoritarians depend on exhaustion and euphemism. They depend on people being embarrassed to use clear words.
You are not wrong to keep using them.
And I won’t stop either.
We amplify each other because that’s how this works now,not through institutions, but through networks of people who refuse to look away. Share widely. Cite fiercely. Keep naming it plainly.
And Monday,I’m wishing you steady hands, sharp minds, and good news from that surgeon. Keep me posted.
We are not abstract. And neither is the fight.
Thanks, that was so inspiring that I am going to copy and paste it at the top of my journal to get my essay juices flowing every day!!