Despite its popularity universal health care paid for and defended as a human right by the federal government will not happen in the U.S. anytime soon because of neoliberalism’s long death and the country is awash in white supremacy running wild.
That pessimism does not mean people dedicated to expanding human rights in the U.S. should stop agitating for it by any means necessary.
But leftists live understanding why the movement for universal health care ignited by nurses’ unions, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Jacobin, and other influential voices of the U.S. left is doomed. It must be noted that the left in the U.S. is not organized or galvanized for the gathering right wing storm.
The right in the U.S. is united by the gun, fundamental Christianity, and a takeover of local, state, and the federal government to protect white supremacy and install an authoritarian regime that will make the Taliban blush.
President Joe Biden is an out-of-touch old white man, who will extend neoliberalism’s reign to the delight of the nation’s rightists, the DNC and the neoliberal power couple Neera Tanden and Rahm Emmanuel.
But woe to the poor, minorities, queers, leftists, and human rights advocates, for they will be hunted down, killed, sent to re-education, camps, or put in a cage with Dave Chappelle and Caitlyn Jenner.
Hillary Clinton, a neoliberal GOAT says, universal health care is too expensive and collectivist or socialistic, and so way out of reach. How do we pay for such an expensive domestic program like health care from cradle to grave, is Clinton’s much-mocked retort to calls for universal health care. Context is needed, remember Hillary also loves the military and appears to be a bit of war hog. Hillary has been a powerful supporter of everlasting war on terror and other wars, such as one in Iraq, costing billions of dollars a month. Whatever the military wanted, Hillary was there, she is its handmaiden.
Hillary is a terrible politician, and lost a White House run to the racist, misogynist and TV game show host, Donald Trump. She is also an annoying Baby Boomer, like her husband Bill, another founder of neoliberalism. The Clintons found their way from Arkansas to D.C. to NYC, and both remain committed to annoying leftists, coddling the wealthy, and defending capitalism.
Even if Biden could win reelection, with a House and Senate majority, and then Harris won the presidency, which is unlikely, universal health care would still be off the table for the foreseeable future.
Biden and Harris are bought by the health care insurance industry. See The Daily Poster for ample evidence of the health care insurance industry’s ties to both politicians. The Poster also reports on the aggressive health insurance lobbyists supporting the Obama era law the Affordable Care Act. Biden/Harris with a congressional majority would opt to make the ACA “better,” for the consumer and the insurer. Not much would change, at its heart BidenCare will remain an insurance program.
Another scenario — Trump or Florida Governor Ron DeSantis beat Joe Biden’s re-election effort and retake the executive branch for the white supremacist party. What does that mean for universal health care? The Republican Party will always be tethered to U.S. markets and profiteering. U.S. capitalism thrives on death, as it always has right from the get-go. Property and profits, and screw people, U.S. capitalism taunts.
Humanitarians should never stop calling out the outlandish health care insurance industry and big business hospitals and agitating for justice, and health care as a human right.
But at this moment white supremacy is the imminent threat to the U.S. as any form of functioning republic.
Leftists are way behind and bickering, as they have for decades, and it will not stop.
There is no common ground. Socialists are in the mix, and they are not going to hold hands with the likes of Neera Tanden, Rahm Emanuel, Eric Adams, or the slew of other defenders of status quo.
Therefore, universal health care in the U.S. is off the table for decades to come.
If the “health care” insurance industry could be taken out of the mix, this might not be the case.
