Links are at the end.
Paid subscriptions are coming up for renewal. I’m hoping that despite my recent extended break from reading and writing—and I still cranked out more than 200 of whatever it is I’m doing in the first year of doing it—those of you who paid to help start this thing rolling will consider renewing, and I thank those of you who already have.
I haven’t reached the point where I become a prison abolitionist, probably because I don’t understand the alternatives to prison, or more I don’t think we would ever devote the necessary resources to them. I can’t deny, though—and have no reason or desire to deny—that our system of justice and incarceration is mostly arbitrary; mostly whimsical in a bad way.
Meet the Grennon family, whose paterfamilias and three sons invented a church and sold bleach to the rubes as a miracle cure, to the continuing disapproval of the FDA.
The father and one of the sons fled to Colombia ahead of the law, and were extradited back on condition that they’d be sentenced to no more than the five year maximum sentence for defrauding the U.S. government. The other two sons, who stayed put, were sentenced to more than 12 years because they were found guilty of a conspiracy charge that the fugitives skated on because of the extradition deal.
So the latter two will spend twice the time in jail because they didn’t run. Their (professed) faith in Jaysus and lack of faith in the Colombian authorities cost them dear. And nobody, victims of the scam least of all, is made whole.1
(Check out the Colombian storm trooper in the story photo.)
They’re stealing health care, which isn’t anything new and which we addressed here a few days ago, but The Nation has a more extensive and historical take on the sometimes catastrophic loss of Medicaid attending the end of the pandemic, which is not actually ended.
Uniquely among high-income nations, we allow our residents to periodically, and protractedly, lose healthcare, and to suffer as a result. Achieving the goal of universal coverage is a moral imperative. Yet any vision of universal healthcare worthy of the name must provide seamless, cradle-to-grave healthcare to everyone. Without continuity, there is, far too often, no care at all.2
Slitting the same vein, Jacobin takes note of the Medicare Advantage scam, which funnels government and Medicare recipient money into corporate hands while reducing the amount and quality of health care available through the program.
Medicare Advantage plans receive a flat payment for the care they provide, strongly incentivizing the insurers sponsoring the plans to ration care — leading to high rates of wrongful claim denials, worse health outcomes, and costly administrative headaches for providers.
These private plans have been under fire for the rate at which they deny patient care. As the Lever reported, these claims have a devastating cost to health outcomes but frequently save insurance companies money as patients forgo treatments they cannot afford.
Got your death panels right here, y’all. Death panels and highway robbers.3
Among the characteristics of health care theft is that we know how to fix it but the people who could do refuse to, some on the basis that universal health care is mythological and others, that it will cost too much or be too disruptive to “the industry.” This despite the rampant looting perpetrated by the industry mainstays.
It’s a similar dynamic to what we see with global warming, which is a much more dire threat than even the people most aware of it are willing to admit—we know how to address it, but we can’t get the people with power and resources to do so. Climate newsie Barbara Moran took a look at the phenomenon in an opinion piece at WBUR.
In March, the United Nations released a massive climate change report. The biggest takeaway: Global warming will soon pass the oft-mentioned target of 1.5 degrees Celsius [above preindustrial averages].
. . .
After this report came out, something weird happened. Unlike the blunt Dr. Thorne, most climate scientists (and journalists) didn’t change how they publicly spoke about 1.5 C. Admitting defeat could risk “demotivation” said Pascal Lamy, the commissioner of the Climate Overshoot Commission. Scientists kept saying things like: “We need to act now to stay below 1.5” or “it’s getting harder, but still technically possible.”Technically possible? Like, if aliens appear with magic tools that fix climate change?
Dropping the pretense that we’re not now guaranteed to blow past the 1.5°C milestone, some of the scientists Moran spoke with think, will discourage support for even the feeble amelioration efforts undertaken by governments and industries to date. Moran allows as how this could be true in some instances, but thinks it’s more generally a patronizing approach which encourages people to dodge reality. She favors a unified call to arms.4
Yr. editor can speak to the fact that some people really do take hopefulness, from climate journalists and scientists, as a signal that we got time and needn’t put the pedal to the metal. Let us proceed incrementally and with caution. Mostly unsaid is that as always, the people most brutally served by by both health care theft and global warming are people who don’t matter to people with power and resources.
I can also confess to shying away from recommending what I think are possibly the only tactics likely to prod people into marshalling and expending the resources necessary to limit global warming to whatever degree is possible now.
Music: the first three of these albums are EPs running 12-20 minutes. I like all of the artists and I think have mentioned them all before. I’m particularly taken by Imelda May and Jay Som, the latter playing a Godin guitar during part of her wonderful KEXP set.
Giant Drag, “Devil Inside The Albion Rooms;5” Garbage, “Witness to Your Love;6” Hooverphonic, “Belgium In The Rain;7” Imelda May, “Mayhem;8” Jay Som, “Anak Ko.9”
And that, Comrades, is all I got. Share it if you like it, and consider subscribing if you’ve not already so considered—it’s free unless you want to pay.
Weldon:
You know, I am far cheaper than Lever on my articles. They are free on Angry Bear Blog. You know, one of those little economics blogs. My MA was in econ from Loyola University of Chicago. I was destined for University of Chicago except my wife and I were on our third. I needed to be home. Forty years in Supply Chain which included healthcare companies.
I am paid up for another year of reading your interesting articles which I will take from time to time and post on Angry Bear. Be safe, looks like the mean bug is coming around again.