There are counties in the U.S. where you’re beating the odds if you make it past 70, writes Richard Eskow. The country should stop tinkering around. It needs Medicare for All.
(KOMUnews, Flickr, CC BY 2.0)
By Richard Eskow
Common Dreams
From The Economist, Sept. 28: “Living to 120 is becoming an imaginable prospect.”
From The Washington Post, Oct. 3: “An epidemic of chronic illness is killing Americans in their prime.”
When it comes to social insurance, the Post is hardly a leftist publication. Its editorial page routinely inveighs against Social Security and Medicare “entitlements.” That makes the lede to its Oct. 3 story even more striking. It begins, “The United States is failing at a fundamental mission — keeping people alive.”
At roughly the same time, The Economist tells us that “after years of false starts, the idea of a genuine elixir of longevity is taking wing. Behind it is a coterie of fascinated and ambitious scientists and enthusiastic and self-interested billionaires.”
The neoliberalist house organ notes that
“some people, observing billionaires’ interest in longevity-promoting startups, worry that the benefits will be captured mainly by the rich, leading to a class of long-lived Übermenschen lording it over short-lived ordinary folk.”
Stuff and nonsense, scoffs the British mag. It reassures us that “technologies have a record of spreading, and cheapening as they do so.”
That will come as news to poor people of the United States, whose lives are growing shorter and shorter.
Live to 120? There are counties in the United States where you’re beating the odds if you make it past 70. The majorities in these counties may be white, Black, or Native American. But each suffers from poverty, a shortage of healthcare options, and a needlessly complex insurance system, while racism, ageism, and regional animosities compound the mortality crisis.
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The system’s complexity is largely an artifact of for-profit insurance, for-profit pharmaceuticals, and, increasingly, for-profit medical offices. The Post tells us of one chronic-disease sufferer:
“After he stopped working about seven years ago, he briefly qualified for Medicaid. But then he began collecting Social Security at 62, and his income exceeded the Medicaid eligibility limit. Next, he moved to an Affordable Care Act plan. Bouncing from plan to plan, he negotiated the complexities of being in-network or out-of-network …”
This is neoliberalism in a nutshell.
Medicare for All Rally, Los Angeles, February 2017. (Molly Adams, Flickr, CC BY 2.0)
The Economist assures us that longevity science will be democratically applied: “It is hard to imagine a privilege more likely to spark rebellion than a ruling class that hoards age-treatments to escape the great leveller.” But the age-extending treatments we have today — for cardiovascular disease, for asthma, for cancer — are already being hoarded, albeit in less obvious ways. That’s why the once-small death gap between poor and wealthier regions has grown so dramatically.
As the Post writes:
“Sickness and death are scarring entire communities in much of the country. The geographical footprint of early death is vast: In a quarter of the nation’s counties, mostly in the South and Midwest, working-age people are dying at a higher rate than 40 years ago.”
The rebellion is overdue. Counties hardest hit by the mortality crisis correspond pretty closely to support for Donald Trump and the far right. That may not have been the rebellion The Economist was talking about, but it’s a rebellion all the same.
The Post writes:
“Forty years ago, small towns and rural regions were healthier for adults in the prime of life. The reverse is now true. Urban death rates have declined sharply, while rates outside the country’s largest metro areas flattened and then rose. Just before the pandemic, adults 35 to 64 in the most rural areas were 45 percent more likely to die each year than people in the largest urban centers.”
Democrats should take note, both for the greater good and for its own political future. The Electoral College and the Senate, both artifacts of slavery, give disproportionate political power to voters in the very areas hit hardest by death inequality. Yes, Democrats took some steps to address the crisis, but the fact remains: it kept getting worse during the presidential years of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
Bold action is needed to save lives — not “bold” as in “here’s something complicated and incremental that may help you in 2026,” but “bold” as in Medicare for All. It’s not enough to take a victory lap for past accomplishments, because those accomplishments haven’t stopped the dying. You can’t save the marginalized by tinkering around the margins.
There’s that line from President John F. Kennedy: “Those who make peaceful evolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable.”
We’ve been warned.
Richard (RJ) Eskow is a freelance writer. Much of his work can be found here. His weekly program, The Zero Hour, can be found on cable television, radio, Spotify, and podcast media. He is a senior adviser with Social Security Works.
This article is from Common Dreams.
Views expressed in this article and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
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While there are many complexities that must be navigated, a simple aphorism is appropriate: ‘living well is the first essential for dying well.’ The first responsibility of a society is to create and allow the conditions that give opportunity for people to live well. To a large extent the US is denying that responsibility. This makes the obsession with longevity ludicrous.
Whatever “science will be democratically applied” … That did not come to pass in matters of redevelopment, housing, education and it would be foolish to imagine it would somehow be realized in the health sector; the raping ground for greedy capitalists ! By the way, that is a great Kennedy quote.
All should understand by now, the insurance “industry” is a corporate racket, particularly where healthcare is concerned, and needs to be abolished. That we’re the only developed country that still has a for-profit system speaks volumes. Yes of course there are people out there who ought to take better care of themselves. As several pointed out already, that’s not the point. Hundreds of families are bankrupted every year because of medical bills. Nurses and other medical service providers are overworked and underpaid. The ER rooms look like something from “Night Of The Living Dead.” We don’t have a healthcare system, we have a sick-care system. An analyst at Goldman Sachs admitted once that curing cancer would be a “bad business model.” Still so few seem to have gotten it through their heads- we can do better than this, and in the transition to a proper public healthcare system, save a hell of a lot of $.
“Hot Damn”, I love it when everybody comes out swinging!
Let’s get them juices flowing folks.
I have always thought that the statistic of police fatal shooting presented by major news papers like NYT, Post, Guardian, etc to acquire the electoral support of Afro-Americans in particular were outright biased and incorrect.
To me the major flaw of those statistic was that they were comparing the fatal police violence by racial population, including poor and rich alike. Have you ever heard of a rich person, whether black or white killed by the police? let me know.
While, when you compare the police fatal shooting by racial population living in poverty, the picture is quite different, the fatal shootings in proportion to the number of people living in poverty were almost identical (still I believe the afroamericans were slightly higher).
It has never been about race, it has always been about social status, about a “pecking order” with the one at the bottom bearing most of the weight of an unjust society, the one suffering the most. same is for the health care.
Often your hear that it is the fault of the poor if they are poor, sort of blaming a woman for being raped, for being too sexy and outgoing. There is no worse trap than being poor; the more you struggle the tighter it gets
The myth of the land of opportunity is true only in small part; true that dedication and perseverance can help in climbing the social latter, but an even greater truth is that luck/timing, access to resources, to healthcare and education, developing relevant connections, gaining support and often complying/contributing to an unjust system play an even greater role in turning the tide. Who is in is in who falls out is out, is more the reality.
The biggest political failure is the left, selling false hopes in order to grab more power and then forgetting the most vulnerable that have elected them. Is democracy the best political system? I think not. Not in the west at least. Anarchy perhaps at this point is the solution granted that education for all is available.
Too many Americans still think that rich people are good and thus healthy, poor people are sick brecause they are bad.
Damn, do people actually think that? That’s ludicrous.
Everything this writer says was more true in the 1950s when there was not medicare but rural areas and what then were mostly conservative cities were quite healthy.
This is another example of finding a (what the person considers an epiphanic) detail and then fitting it nicely into an agenda.
Something infecting every aspect of society today–in its journalism and in its politics.
In the 1950s, doctors/hospitals didn’t charge $11,500. for two rabies vaccines — which is what CHRISTUS St. Vincent (Santa Fe) just sent me the bill for — two vaccines that, as it turns out, I could have purchased online for $380. I was told (erroneously) by the NM Health Department that the only place they were available was/is Emergency Rooms at hospitals.
A little digging revealed that Ernie Sadau, CHRISTUS Health’s CEO, is making a cool $13,500,000.00 a year (yes, that decimal is in the right place), for running a so-called “non-profit” “Christian” regional hospital system. That’s 40K a day, 5K an hour. Who the double-hockey-sticks can possibly be worth that, here on God’s green earth?! (Answer: No one.)That’s just evil.
Gone are the days of the family doctor, the country doctor, the pay-a-reasonable-fee-out-of-pocket halcyon years (I jest – every decade has its problems). The point I’m trying to make in a nutshell: the monetary feedback loop between capitalist-healthcare and capitalist-insurance companies is what is really killing Americans.
So, h*ll yeah — Medicare for All! Beam me up, Scottie.
Medicare does not pay for everything, so “Medicare for all” is NOT the same as completely free healthcare for all. We need totally free healthcare, period. It is barbaric to charge money for healthcare.
True that. Barbarism or S….Only in “merka do millions of people go into debt due to medical costs, many of whom fall into bankruptcy. So the Health Extortion Mafia extorts people for inadequate health care and then rakes them over the coals with interest charges and fees. If people just stopped to think about how barbaric and fkd up that is…
“It is barbaric to charge money for healthcare.”
Even more barbaric to fund weapons like cluster bombs and depleted uranium to kill “healthy” people.
It really is like a friend told me twenty years ago: the problem with America is that we would rather spend a dollar to kill someone else’s child on the other side of the world than spend a dime to help our own children here.
The liberal mantra, droning on. After all this time, every one of you knows why universal health care (by any other name) is not going to happen. Congress still knows that universal health care makes no sense in a country that denies basic human rights to food and shelter to those left jobless. Poverty has soared throughout this era, and the life expectancy of the US poor fell below that of every developed nation. That’s reality.
I know the reality. The point is to change reality. Just sitting with your arms folded does nothing.
This is truly unbelievable.
The gadamned truth about health care is that insurance costs wreak havoc on the system and D.C. in owned in large part by the Insurance Lobby.
Health care problems are born out of the value system embraced by greedy congressmen and women.
But, Oh My Gosh we can whole sale slaughter people for out date ideology.
I mean WTF!!
Just admit it. You’re talking about Capitalism.
Capitalism has created the vast majority of health care advances over the past century. The biomedical capitalist corporations are at the forefront of such advances. While the wealthy benefit first, virtually all medical advances eventually benefit the vast majority of the population. Two small examples: MRIs and CT scans, invented by capitalist corporations (like EMI) have helped hundreds of millions, including Medicare and Medicaid patients (as well as “no-pay” patients).
The problem is not capitalism (at least not free-market capitalism), It’s how do we decrease the time between when the wealthy get these treatments and the rest of us do. Biting the hand that feeds you is absurd and detrimental to all.
Not quite: you forgot massive govt subsidies and tax advantages, so the “private sector” receives public subsidy and gets to pocket the profits. Capitalism is not the “hand that feeds”. That sounds like Stockholm Syndrome, or you personally benefit from the status-quo.
Where I live in northern DE, Christiana Care, the big medical player in the area, successfully sued a competitor which wanted to set up an MRI business. Limiting competition to keep prices high is another feature of ”feeding the hand that bites us’. Consider what happened with Epi-Pen.
“Democrats should take note”
Another shill for the Democratic party. The Democratic party is the same as the Republican party. Biden told you so – he beat the Socialist. Nancy Pelosi told you so, “we’re capitalists.” They have no interest in medicare for all.
So perhaps people like Eskow should wake up and stop supporting the Democratic party. Promote real change, not fake change.
You Richard have been warned.
Everything that I’ve read or scanned share a common theme. In the USA, the duopoly has constructed a structure that makes the meaningful consolidation and political advance of a third party neigh on impossible. Have you read or know of something different? Please share if you do. Begging that, it behooves Progressives to build a tightly knit, well orchestrated and focused bulwark for delivering a coup to the Democratic Establishment.
Hear, hear!
That’s today’s America. Let the revolution gain traction. Remember Occupy Wall Street but this time make it succeed and last.
In a functioning democracy, a falling life expectancy and ‘real wages’ that stay flat or are falling might actually be an issue in an election campaign.
In America, we are told that all money must instead go to the war, and the only candidates who disagree have all strongly supported falling life expectancy with their behavior during this pandemic. And the ones in the Red Shirts are not only pro-Death, but they all believe that real wages must fall to get more money to their oligarchs, and only really disagree on the target of the war that eats all the money.
Its hard to believe that falling life expectancy could be popular in a democracy. But, welcome to America. There is no popular campaign with the slogan “Its the Dying, Stupid!”
The entire Democrat platform switched to ‘Hate Trump’ in 2016. Are you better off than you were eight years ago?
You should be. As you live and learn and grow, you are supposed to become better off. That’s what Americans had always expected over generation after generation. You get more experience at work, get a promotion, get a raise, pay down a mortgage, save some money, life was supposed to get a little easier and better for all the hard work it took. And your kids were going to have it better than you did.
Then, poof, it was gone, and the world had more billionaires.
It would be more economical to ban ‘diet’ sodas that make people morbidly obese.
Spending our way out of every perceived problems is how we got to $33 trillion in debt.
If our Federal Government demonstrated a modicum of discipline, it might just dawn on people how to live healthier lives on their own.
The economics of improved Medicare For All, or single payer have been studied. The current system costs far more than single payer would and would provide better health outcomes.
As an individual who ran four miles three times a week and worked out, heavy workouts I can testify to the benefits of watching what you eat and exercising. These activities, in my opinion, definitely work in the favor of the individual involved in them. Still my inherited genes predisposed my to be affected by congestive heart disease, father’s side.
Life is inherently dangerous to begin with and road down organic decay, those affects of stress, time, exposure to poisoned air, water, food and gravity eventually win out. At the age of 75 I’m not looking forward to living another 45 years, something I’m pretty sure I don’t have to stress about.
You seem more than willing to place the blame for health failure on the individual to the tune of $33 trillion dollars. Hog spit, ma brother!
This country has a stellar military that the MICCMAT is addicted to. Your political beliefs leaked out here friend.
I do agree however that that if our federal government demonstrated a modicum of discipline, they would not have spent us into the $33 trillion in debt fighting bullshit wars. I got drafted in 1968 and the entire episode was for naught. LBJ’s war of choice. That war cost billions and settled not one damned thing.
Then we had the war in Iraq shoved down our throats, Dick Chainey, Dummy Rumsfeld, Wolfawittless, 41 & 43 all got their war of choice, and in the process the Village Idiot from Crawford Texas doubled down and declared a War on Terrorism, another war of choice. The result was THEY incurred unbelievable amounts of debt for this country. Last but not the least by any measure the fumble Fu%$! Republicans backed mad man Donnie Trump.
In accordance with the worthless two party system that is dragging the country down the tube the democrats did nothing but cave to the Deep State and the MICCMATT and now have us involved in another war that easily been avoided if anyone in D.C. had any brains or balls. A war because NATO & the U.S. gave Putin no other choice than to appear witless and weak, which he is and he is proving it. So much for the seperior intelligence community of the U.S..
Wake the hell up Dude!
Thanks CN
You’re right of course. It’s a high moral crime that the US has a for-profit health care system. It’s got nothing to do with bogus Federal debt or any of the other fantasies that libertarians like the above poster trot out. We could have single payer tomorrow if there was political will, and its effects would be dramatic and hugely beneficial. Bit wr ain’t gonna get it without a sustained protest, which I don’t see happening soon, but you never know. It can start with an end to wars we start–that must come first.
I assume that this comment suggests that the health insurance industry doesn’t skim 20% of the cost of healthcare or that for profit medical providers do not regularly perform unneeded procedures among other inefficiencies and that pharmaceutical companies don’t overcharge. The U.S. for profit healthcare system regards the human body as a commodity.
Actually DD I made it abundantly clear what I think. However the prices charged for both medical care and insurance coverage are exorbitant and many health care institutions want to perform procedures, lots pf procedures. Money money money! Especially medicals facilities associated with certain medical schools. I have personal experience with this practice and the country could do better.
If the U.S. for profit healthcare system provides a commodity called health care, and if they cared much as their advertising suggests they wouldn’t bankrupt their customers.
Health care in this country is the same as justice in this country, you get from both what you can afford. You know the best money can buy. The U.S. health care system in the U.S. considers life as a commodity, that thought is pretty damned concerning considering the slaughter on going in Ukraine.
But what ever.
Thanks CN
At the same time, the insurance industry will deny you access to treatments if it doesn’t match their profiles, your doctor be damned.
Bingo. 100% true.
Since there are multiple replies to my previous statement, here is a single response to some of the reactions to it.
It is always worthwhile to engage in a healthy debate. People who comment on CN are among the most reasonable and intelligent commenters I see anywhere on the internet. Your thoughts, intentions and views have my respect.
1. Each year, the U.S. Federal Government spends more than it collects in revenue. This is and always has been unsustainable. It is how we have ended up with $33 Trillion in debt. Left unchanged, this is a formula for the eventual collapse of our economy. Rising inflation is already eroding our nations wealth rapidly and silently.
2. Spending allocation in descending order:
28%-Health and Medicare (15 + 13)
23%-Social Security
18%-Defense + Veterans (13 + 5)
13%-Income security (free stuff for poor people)
11%-net interest
Total 93%
3. Corporate influence over Congress via lobbying places outsized importance on spending to benefit the MIC as well as the healthcare industrial complex. Our Congress is irredeemably corrupted by corporate power and ‘fund-raising.’ That too, is unsustainable.
4. The military budget is the obvious place to target immediately for spending cuts. Most of what our military does is not defense. Our meddling in the affairs of other nations around the world is both unnecessary and unwelcome. But over 75% of the Federal budget will still be allocated to SS, healthcare, welfare and interest payments combined. And growing.
5. A single-payer system might reduce costs by consolidating the operations of the healthcare industry. Or possibly make everything more expensive and less responsive to patients. You can fund a study to ‘prove’ anything you wish to advocate. But the record of our Federal government in managing anything financial is often a colossal failure. Student loans were ‘consolidated’ a few years ago under the Federal government. The result of that bundling is now to dump $billions in debts of students who borrowed beyond their means to taxpayers who avoided making those poor financial decisions. That qualifies as a scam. The health care system in Germany, for example is much more like ours than most people realize. It is a mix of private companies with government mandates that delivers similar quantity and quality of services as those provided in the U.S. Single payer systems in Canada and the U.K. have serious problems today in wait times for access to procedures and government red tape. Free health services in the U.S. for anyone who cannot afford to pay, including illegal aliens is already mandated by law. No one in need of health care can be turned away. There is no doubt that health care costs can be reduced while improving the level of health care. A Federal takeover is not likely to achieve either of those objectives. We already cannot afford the bloated Federal bureaucracy we have. Adding on to it will only exacerbate our crushing debt problem.
6. Two thirds of Americans are overweight and over 40% are obese. These are individual choices that have direct consequences on each person’s health, as well as individual and collective health care costs. A friend of mine who is an M.D. told me long ago that she has two kinds of patients: The ones who are sick all of the time and those who are never sick. Choosing the latter is recommended.
What we need is socialism.
Since there are multiple replies to my previous statement, here is a single response to some of the reactions to it.
It is always worthwhile to engage in a healthy debate. People who comment on CN are among the most reasonable and intelligent commenters I see anywhere on the internet. Your thoughts, intentions and views have my respect.
1. Each year, the U.S. Federal Government spends more than it collects in revenue. This is and always has been unsustainable. It is how we have ended up with $33 Trillion in debt. Left unchanged, this is a formula for the eventual collapse of our economy. Rising inflation is already eroding our nations wealth rapidly and silently.
2. Spending allocation in descending order:
28%-Health and Medicare (15 + 13)
23%-Social Security
18%-Defense + Veterans (13 + 5)
13%-Income security (free stuff for poor people)
11%-net interest
Total 93%
3. Corporate influence over Congress via lobbying places outsized importance on spending to benefit the MIC as well as the healthcare industrial complex. Our Congress is irredeemably corrupted by corporate power and ‘fund-raising.’ That too, is unsustainable.
4. The military budget is the obvious place to target immediately for spending cuts. Most of what our military does is not defense. Our meddling in the affairs of other nations around the world is both unnecessary and unwelcome. But over 75% of the Federal budget will still be allocated to SS, healthcare, welfare and interest payments combined. And growing.
5. A single-payer system might reduce costs by consolidating the operations of the healthcare industry. Or possibly make everything more expensive and less responsive to patients. You can fund a study to ‘prove’ anything you wish to advocate. But the record of our Federal government in managing anything financial is often a colossal failure. Student loans were ‘consolidated’ a few years ago under the Federal government. The result of that bundling is now to dump $billions in debts of students who borrowed beyond their means to taxpayers who avoided making those poor financial decisions. That qualifies as a scam. The health care system in Germany, for example is much more like ours than most people realize. It is a mix of private companies with government mandates that delivers similar quantity and quality of services as those provided in the U.S. Single payer systems in Canada and the U.K. have serious problems today in wait times for access to procedures and government red tape. Free health services in the U.S. for anyone who cannot afford to pay, including illegal aliens is already mandated by law. No one in need of health care can be turned away. There is no doubt that health care costs can be reduced while improving the level of health care. A Federal takeover is not likely to achieve either of those objectives. We already cannot afford the bloated Federal bureaucracy we have. Adding on to it will only exacerbate our crushing debt problem.
6. Two thirds of Americans are overweight and over 40% are obese. These are individual choices that have direct consequences on each person’s health, as well as individual and collective health care costs. A friend of mine who is an M.D. told me long ago that she has two kinds of patients: The ones who are sick all of the time and those who are never sick. Choosing the latter is recommended.
A very significant contributor to early death vs longevity is cultural influences on lifestyle choices. This is true for health choices in rural and urban areas, and also for the pandemic of violence in many urban areas. This article doesn’t address that point. What’s the use of giving “medicare for all” if people are grossly obese, addicted to drugs, or are members of violent gangs and cartels?
How predictable and convenient. Blame the victims. Of course, it’s always the plebs fault, the oligarchy is never to blame
So, because a tiny minority doesn’t live healthy, nobody gets it? Really? Another stupid libertarian argument. Everybody gets it, or no one does. It’s really simple.
You miss the point. In a society that really cares about the well-being of its citizens, drug addiction and other afflictions of despair would not exist. Violent gangs would not exist, because these gangs are the result of a society that is sick and cruel — American society. We need socialism.
Sadly, the lack of a comprehensive health care system in the US has been an issue for decades. Many have predicted the terrible state of affairs for years.
The corrupt institutions of power have just made the situation worse: so-called Affordable Care Act was merely a giant subsidy for the Health Extortion Racket (BigPharma, finance and insurance).
Both the D and R factions support the status-quo of health extortion. If you can afford the extortion, you might be OK, if you cannot you are almost certainly going to die a premature death. (Soylent Green anyone?)
The US has the worst health outcomes in the OECD and the MOST EXPENSIVE costs in the world. But don’t take it personal, it’s strictly business. Capitalist market “solution”: Get in on the ground floor of Soylent Green futures and make a killing!