Meanwhile, per Reddit, at least one insurance company is demanding that all employees sign an oath that states that the insurance industry and its executives are “indispensible” to American healthcare.
https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/1h7kzok/my_friend_got_asked_to_take_a_pledge_saying/
Indispensable? Just ask the countries that got rid of private for-profit health insurance. They’re getting by pretty well.
Plus, a pledge/oath to the company? In all my 40+ years of working, I’ve never heard of such a thing. I wonder how many people will say, “screw you,” leaving the company shorthanded. Of course, most won’t, I think, because they need their jobs, and the associated health insurance benefits.
Because he’s a white male CEO, which means he counts as human. As far as decision makers are concerned his death outweighs everyone that’s been killed by the industry a thosuand times over. How many people eating at a fast food restaurant care how many cattle need to be slaughtered for hamburgers? Because that’s what we are to them: cattle. Things that exist to be consumed.
Sure… but to follow that logic and think like a neoliberal (the hypothetical democrats who would surely advocate for…something if only they were thinking straight), the argument has to be “He counts as human, therefore we should continue to follow Republicans off a cliff and pursue a tough(er)on crime stance, possibly even create a new class of federal crimes for crimes against wealthy businessmen” not “Universal healthcare for all!!!”
Satirical though it may be, I think CMC is much closer to the truth:
If we really want to affect change, we have to protest peacefully in numbers too large to be ignored.
It may be too late for that though. I know the new administration would treat even a peaceful protest in very bad ways.
On top of that, actually voting in the (democratic) primaries. Part of the problem is the candidates we have to chose from these days tends to be either (a) fascists (the Republicans of today) or (b) neoliberals (the Republicans of 20 years ago now masquerading as Democrats). Those candidates may never support universal healthcare no matter how popular it becomes, because unfortunately they (1) still believe in adhering to sociopolitical norms, especially it hurts their own voters and (2) the fascists have convinced them that there is nothing outrageous than even a hint of socialism in government policy.
So before protests can have any chance of success, the Democratic Party needs to be pulled back towards the center at least (and og willing, one day, to the left), and the best way to do that is to vote for the most progressive candidates in the primaries. Until we get more progressives into office under the Democratic ticket, all those protests will be (at best) just so much noise to elected representatives (the neoliberals) and (at worst) insurrection to be met with violence by the fascist state (quite possibly the federal government of the next four years).
But under no circumstances should leftists vote third party. That’s just a more principled vote for fascism (which, oddly enough, is the same thing you could say about someone who really is a fascist voting for someone on the Republican ticket these days).
No love at all for my proposal that disputed claims should go to binding third-party arbitration, taking the approval/denial process out of the insurance companies hands? That would be a Hell of a lot easier to pass than universal health care; or is that a case of too much for one side and too little for the other?
It’s not a bad idea but I dispute that it would be easier to pass, because it takes away their ability to control their profit margins, which is the whole point.
Which would in practice be promptly turned into the insurance companies just handed automatic victories every time, just as always happens when companies are allowed to settle disputes with “third-party arbitration”.
It’s not the fact that he was killed, it was the reaction to him being killed.
You have a huge industry, that is central to almost everyone’s lives, that costs untold billions every year, and essentially none of their customers are actually happy with the product. In fact, most of them actively hate the product, but are stuck with it - realistic options to replace the product simply don’t exist.
And now, people are beginning to realize - everyone feels that way. It’s not just you, or your family, or all your friends - it’s everyone.
Imagine if the auto industry built shitty, expensive cars that blew up and killed people 30% of the time people had to use them, and then actively lobbied against any regulations on cars, and against any public transit alternatives, and then convinced your employers to make driving one of their cars a condition of employment. That’s what health insurance is like.
I find this contrast amusing. Reading on SDMB, we keep hearing about how these guys are interchangable, so just killing one won’t make any difference, but then you read this, and Elon Musk’s posts about how the world would grind to a halt without our Precious CEOs running everything.
I sense a good experiment in the offing! Let’s kill, say, 25% of the CEOs, and see if others rise to the top, or the system grinds to a halt.
It’s the Atlas Shrugged mentality. The “elite” are the titans who do everything of importance, the rest of us are parasites on their greatness. If they went away then society would immediately collapse without them to prop it up against the dead weight of the 99.99 percent.
e.g. the Trabant of American industries.
Stranger
It looks like the police have someone they are questioning in Altoona, PA.
Reporting is that they had a gun matching the one used in NYC and matching fake IDs.
Nothing terrible about it, no maybe about it either.
People have celebrated the deaths of criminals for ages. A teenager gets gunned down breaking into a house to steal a purse and it gets celebrated as positive gun news.
This guy hurt tens of thousands more people than that teenager, and people like him made sure it was perfectly legal. Am I supposed to be weeping for him?
His name is Luigi Mangione. He’s related to musician Chuck Mangione but I’m not sure how.
So ridiculous.
I have never seen “universal health care” abbreviated before, and have referred to United healthcare as UHC for decades, fwiw.
I’m on this side.
Who are the arbitrators?
But it’s an interesting idea. I’m afraid that would spawn yet another layer of inefficiency in our already inefficient system.