The American Mask of Death
March 15, 2020 Health insurance executives themselves are at risk because
they've put profit before public health, says Joe Lauria.
"The red death had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been
so fatal, or so hideous. . But Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and
sagacious. When his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his
presence a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the knights
and dames of his court, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one
of his crenellated abbeys. This was an extensive and magnificent structure,
the creation of the prince's own eccentric yet august taste. A strong and
lofty wall girdled it in. This wall had gates of iron. The courtiers, having
entered, brought furnaces and massy hammers and welded the bolts.
They resolved to leave means neither of ingress nor egress to the sudden
impulses of despair or of frenzy from within. The abbey was amply
provisioned. With such precautions the courtiers might bid defiance to
contagion. The external world could take care of itself. In the meantime it
was folly to grieve or to think. The prince had provided all the appliances
of pleasure. There were buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were
ballet-dancers, there were musicians, there was Beauty, there was wine. All
these and security were within. Without was the "Red Death." - Edgar Allan
Poe, "The Masque of the Red Death" (1842).
"It's outrageous that during the worst health crisis facing our country in
decades, insurers want to make clear that they still plan to profit from the
treatment of coronavirus victims. This is just the most recent egregious
example of the greed of the for-profit health insurance system and
highlights why we need a Medicare for All system, which would guarantee
testing and health care to everyone living in the U.S. If costs are waived
for tests, but not for treatment, people who test positive for the
coronavirus may not be able to afford treatment and will continue to infect
others." - Melinda St. Louis, Director of Public Citizen's Medicare for All
Campaign.
By Joe Lauria
Special to Consortium News
The One Percent, including health insurance executives with multimillion
dollar salaries, may live in their "crenellated abbeys" cut off from the
riffraff outside, "the external world that could take care of itself." Until
now, they have gotten away with a hyper-market system, a neoliberal economic
model since the late 1970s, a system that has moved wealth from the majority
to this tiny minority who live in "extensive and magnificent structures"
apart from the population they defraud.
Part of this transfer of wealth involves a ludicrously expensive health
insurance system that shuts out more than 80 million Americans. It is part
of the hyper-individualism of American corporate culture. This message is:
you are on your own. Until you are not.
They can shut their walls with "gates of iron" to poverty, a poverty they
create, and pretend it does not exist. But they can not shut their bolted
walls to a disease of high contagion. The utter disregard for the well-being
of the entire nation is threatening them. Health insurance executives
themselves are at risk because they've put profit before public health.
'We're Not Set Up That Way'
"The system is not really geared to what we need right now, what you are
asking for. That is a failing. Let's admit it. The fact is, the way the
system was set up, the public health component that Dr. Redfield was talking
about, was a system where you put it out there in the public and a physician
asks for it and you get it. The idea of anybody getting it easily the way
people in other countries are doing it - we're not set up for that. Do I
think we should be? Yes. But we're not."-Anthony Fauci, director of the
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in testimony to
Congress on Thursday.
The Mask of the Red Death by FlamiatheDemon (Deviant Art-
flamiathedemon.deviantart.com)
The U.S. is unlike the rest of the industrialized world, which, since the
end of the Second World War, has had some kind of nationalized health
insurance covering all citizens, regardless of their ability to pay. Many of
the partisans who helped defeat the Nazis were socialists who demanded
something in return from their governments after the war. Many British
soldiers were Labour voters. They threw out war leader Winston Churchill in
the 1945 election and the National Health Service was begun in 1948.
Though Harry Truman around the same time floated the idea of socialized
medicine in the U.S., and the 1965 Medicare Act was to eventually cover all
Americans, the greed of medical business interests has always won. It leaves
millions of potentially infected Americans unable to be tested or treated.
And that endangers even those in their high towers who "might bid defiance
to contagion."
"And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a
thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revellers in the
blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture
of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last
of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay
and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all."
Socialism to the Rescue
When the oligarchs' economic system crashed in 2008 from over-speculation,
the U.S. government did the unimaginable. It nationalized industries to save
them. It used socialism to rescue capitalism. But it was temporary. Once the
economy had sufficiently recovered, the U.S. returned to its market
fundamentalism.
If the coronavirus crisis approaches the numbers recent studies point to-as
many as 240 million Americans infected and one million dead-expect serious
consideration to a single-payer system sweeping through Congress and signed
into law.
But once the virus is contained expect your premiums to rise again. Just
like the nationalizations in the 2008 financial crisis, a temporary national
health insurance would only be enacted to save the oligarchs from the Red
Death.
