I keep hearing that the inflation we’re facing is because of the support that was given to people during the early days of the pandemic. I’m skeptical that the temporary increase in unemployment insurance payments, the checks sent out to all US citizens, and other comparitively miserly financial supports are a significant contributor to inflation.
In grad school I learned about the brilliant business strategies that made American businesses so efficient. Those strategies have gotten us a manufacturing and distribution system so brittle that we’re still facing major shortages. The tactics they used to cut costs in the past are costing us dearly now. Shareholders get the profits, we get the loses. Somehow fast fashion chains can take a skirt from an idea to store racks in two weeks, yet there’s still a struggle to get effective and affordable N95s.
The real reason I’m skeptical about who’s to blame for inflation is that the companies raising prices are turning record profits. If they were simply passing cost increases to customers, profits should be flat. Instead, they’re making more money.
In terms of direct medical costs, Wendell Potter digs into the financial statements of Anthem. Not surprisingly, it's good news for investors, bad for humans.
As Axios put it last year, “Health care has been as profitable as ever during the pandemic. That has been true for both hospitals and health insurers.”
Back in February of 2020, Axios shared CDC findings that one in seven Americans was struggling to pay medical bills. That’s one in seven people, not households.
Here's my naive question of the week: if US health insurance companies have massive profits, why would it be too expensive for the government to offer universal health insurance?
If the market is controlled by a handful of major players and a huge portion of their income is already coming from the government, it could be easy to shift to a system that serves all of us. The government is already insuring the oldest and sickest Americans, so they're already doing the expensive part.
Oh, nursing homes are pretty profitable, too.
Of course, the US isn’t the only country whose friendliness to large businesses has not served the needs of its residents. Earlier this week Canada experienced a massive outage of internet service that brought the country to a standstill. Everything is online, so when there’s no internet, we lose access to critical tools and information.
History shows us that none of this was inevitble. A series of choices and chance led us to this point. It didn’t have to be this way. This situation in this moment in time is wildly improbable.
The way the world is constantly changing can be disorienting and exhausting. In moments like this that inevitable change gives me hope.
Dismantling monopolies, nationalizing critical services, and changing sytems can seem impossible. Monopolies are built, critical services were privatized, and systems came together piece by piece. Some change is fast. Some change is piecemeal. Often it’s both.
The history of our infrastructure and our systems is complicated. In our culture, great advances have been accomplished by exploiting the people actually carrying out the work. The costs of progress are not evenly distributed. Neither are the benefits.
Trying to be equitable and democratic requires us to shift the way we do things. It’s a shift I’m seeing people making. It’s a shift we can make.
Right now the money being spent on medical care is being distributed in ways that does not accomplish its goal. At least not if we continue pretending the goal is to provide medical care. We have to dream. And we have to demand it.
Change is coming. It always is.
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