Disaster Politics

Sometimes disaster has to strike first before we listen to reason. We're just stubborn like that. My brother in law has always been a reckless driver, and we all warned him that if he keeps this up, accidents will happen. He's a much careful driver now, but only after he wrecked his latest daily driver...

I'm afraid this rule doesn't apply to individuals alone. As a collective, we're able to react adequately to imminent threats, real or perceived, like war, natural disasters, the threat of a terrorist attack or even the made-up moral crises we're used to from the conservatives. When the threat is immediate, we react immediately. However, when the threat is somewhere in the future, like with climate change, we don't react at all; panic refuses to get a hold of us, even if we know that we'll cause massive problems for ourselves and our posterity. We're like that brother in law of mine. We have to feel the negative impacts of our behavior before we're willing to even contemplate a change.

America is one of a very few countries where there's not some form of universal healthcare. Time after time Americans are confronted with astronomical prices for their healthcare and medicine. Time after time it's shown how all other wealthy countries have much better healthcare outcomes while paying much less per capita. Single payer healthcare is cheaper and provides universal healthcare that's free at the point of service. It makes changing jobs much easier because healthcare isn't attached to your employer anymore, but rather taken care of by taxation. This has the added benefit that you feel like you're truly part of a community of people who actually gives a damn about you, and makes it so that you're on the same healthcare program your Senator is on. There are no disadvantages to universal single payer healthcare, unless you're a Big Pharma CEO.

When the pandemic started, some optimistic souls thought: "maybe this is the disaster we've been waiting for, and maybe now those in power will see the light, maybe now they'll agree that healthcare is a basic right that should be available to all of us!" But of course that was not the case. That disaster wasn't big enough. Hundreds of thousands people dead, many of them because they didn't have access to basic healthcare, wasn't enough in a population of 330 million souls... What has to happen before something as basic and proven like single payer healthcare becomes available to the citizens of the richest country on the planet?

Well, maybe the small town of Libby, Montana, can serve as an example. That town managed to convince its anti-universal-healthcare senator Max Baucus (D), to make a provision to the Affordable Care Act that created medicare for (almost) all. Baucus was vehemently opposed to universal healthcare:

Montana Democratic Senator Max Baucus, chairman of the all powerful Senate Finance Committee, said everything was on the table–except for single payer. When doctors, nurses and others rose in his hearing to insist that single payer be included in the debate, Baucus had them arrested. As more stood up, Baucus could be heard on his open microphone saying, “We need more police.”
_{source: Healthcare Now}

You see, there was this company, the W. R. Grace Company, that owned and operated a vermiculite mine that had spread deadly airborne asbestos killing hundreds and sickening thousands in Libby and northwest Montana. So when Senator Baucus needed a solution to the catastrophic health disaster that came to light in 2009, in Libby, Montana, and surrounding Lincoln County, he turned to the nation's single payer healthcare system, Medicare, to solve the problem. He inserted a section into the health reform bill that covers the suffering people of Libby, Montana, not just the former miners but the whole community—all covered by Medicare.

Less than two months after passage of the reform bill, a nation-wide alert was issued to inform anyone who had lived or stayed in Lincoln County of their eligibility. On the first day of opening up a storefront in Libby, 60 people had signed up to use their right to healthcare. This is a remarkable story that shows how important universal healthcare is, and how disaster has to strike before our leaders are willing to much needed changes. It also shows how little human live's valued by for profit businesses. Watch the below linked video; it's how I got to know about this unique American town.

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