Originally published to Substack on July 5, 2022 Imported from Substack
Enough is enough. Americans deserve better.
I propose that we don’t pay our medical bills. We should instead scrawl vague threats on them with concrete demands for Universal Healthcare. In blood-colored ink. The scarier the better.
Imagine if congresspeople received hundreds or thousands of these. From all of their constituents. Even those of us who have health “insurance” still receive insanely high bills.
The Enemy
The most sinister enemy is someone who pretends to be your friend.
The so-called “Squad” in congress, the “progressives” won their seats by promising, among other things, Universal Healthcare of various different flavors.
But when confronted with popular demands to use what little leverage they have in order to force a vote on Medicare for All, they completely abandoned their base in order to “play nice” with the Democratic Party establishment.
If you didn’t click the link, Force the Vote was basically a demand that progressives ought to withhold their vote for Nancy Pelosi’s speakership until a Medicare for All vote was put on the floor.
The Medicare for All vote almost certainly wouldn’t have passed, but it would’ve presented a “which side are you on” moment for each representative so as to expose either their loyalty to the corrupt health insurance lobby or their loyalty to their constituents.
Now we know even the progressives are unwilling to put skin in the game to push forward a popular policy.
The Fraud Squad is what we should call them.
As for the rest of the enemies, beyond the progressives in congress, we’ve obviously got Corporate Democrats, Corporate Republicans, and the lobbyists themselves. None of them are democratic, none of them serve The Republic, all of them serve their own greed.
They’re all responsible for our deaths. Every last one of them.
#OrElse
Perhaps we should utilize this hashtag to promote our demands. #OrElse is also flexible enough to be used to rally people around other demands too:
A minimum programme could borrow heavily from FDR’s Second Bill of Rights:
Right to Employment
Right to an adequate income
Right to decent housing
Right to medical care
Right to higher education
Right to Social Security / Retirement Pension
All of these could be demanded, #OrElse.
Got other hashtag ideas? Drop suggestions in the comment section below! 👇