John Buell

Healthcare Even for the Worst Among Us

This past summer Congress and the President did the right thing at least for once by adequately funding the 9/11 first responders compensation fund, thus assuring these injured and ill fire, police, and paramedics full healthcare coverage. Of course this funding would likely not have come as quickly or perhaps not at all except for the shaming administered by ex “Daily Show” star Jon Stewart. That shaming, however, raises some important but seldom asked political and ethical questions.

Stewart’s successful demands on behalf of the 9/11 first responders may have had some less desirable side effects. Honoring their sacrifices is surely appropriate, but the annual practice of dwelling on the event gives it an iconic status not enjoyed by even such national holidays as Labor Day, a day that now has become little more than an occasion for an extra weekend barbecue. 9/11 not only valorizes NYC’s first responders but also the whole militaristic mindset of the so-called War on Terror. Some skepticism about the uses and misuses of 9/11 is in order.

Workers in most industries do not have celebrity spokespersons who highlight their grievances and demand redress. Consider another product many depend upon for their health. The Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting reminds us: “In 2015, the meat and poultry processing industry had the eighth-highest number of severe injury reports of all industries … a higher rate of injury and illness than logging, coal mining and oil and gas extraction, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics ... vast numbers of injuries never get reported in the first place, according to a 2016 report from the Government Accountability Office … For the over 300,000 poultry workers in the US, clocking in doesn’t just mean facing these hazards. It also means another day of working at blistering speeds to satisfy the country’s colossal appetite for chicken. In 2016, the average American ate almost 90 pounds worth, and companies large and small collectively slaughtered more than eight billion birds the same year.” The unreported quota is probably quite high in an industry with a large number of undocumented non-union workers.

What happens when we make health care a privilege accorded only to those who meet our moral tests? Arkansas recently suggested an answer to this question. Jake Johnson of Common Dreams reports: “One of President Donald Trump’s signature healthcare policies, the program demanded that Medicaid recipients work at least 80 hours per month or participate in job training, or risk losing their health insurance … resulted in nearly 20,000 low-income Arkansas residents losing their health coverage” without any increases in employment.

The high costs and other burdens associated with health insurance for the middle and working class helps fuel the bitterness about any group that seems to receive the service for free.

“The Trump Administration’s … promotion of work reporting requirements—is not about supporting better economic or health outcomes for low-income people, but rather about perpetuating inaccurate stigmas and taking away health insurance from those who rely on Medicaid to cut costs,” wrote Joan Alker, executive director of Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families.

Congress eventually did the right thing for first responders, but the whole spectacle implicitly challenges the belief that healthcare is a universal human right. In my estimation first responder and serial killers have an equal right to healthcare. They do not have an equal right to the freedoms of civil society, such as to participate in the market, to buy housing anywhere etc.

As Sen. Bernie Sanders says, if we want people to work, invest in job creating programs. Healthcare as a universal right, funded by progressive taxation, will blunt some of the demonization of difference and facilitate and encourage work and civic engagement.

John Buell lives in Southwest Harbor, Maine and writes on labor and environmental issues. His books include “Politics, Religion, and Culture in an Anxious Age” (Palgrave MacMillan, 2011). Email Jbuell@acadia.net.

From The Progressive Populist, October 15, 2019

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