A plague is stalking America. Named inequality and doomed to tighten the U.S. empire’s hold on first place in the inequality sweepstakes. In fact, the U.S. already has the dubious distinction of being the most unequal of all the economically powerful G7 countries (Canada, France, Germany Japan, UK, US, Italy). How would you like to live in a country where since 1978 corporate pay has ballooned 1,322% while average worker pay crept up 18%. Oh, that’s right many of you do live here seeing firsthand wealthy CEOs and bankers living large while the rest of the country muddles along on scraps from the oligarchs’ table. At the height of the pandemic in 2020, while 14.6 million Americans were losing their employer-sponsored healthcare, [Commonwealth Fund, 10/20], the ratio of CEO-to-typical-worker compensation was a stunning 351-to-1. The richest country in the world and yet 37.2 million live below the poverty line. Go figure.
Outshining them all, the biggest inequality producing industry in the U.S. happens to be the former healing profession, now reborn as the trillion-dollar healthcare business making off with 20% of U.S. GDP. In 2022, its revenues are predicted to be $4.3 trillion. A tidy sum more than double what other countries spend. What do the American people get for all this spending? More COVID deaths (one million plus) than any place on earth. Ditto for Monkey Pox cases (>17.000 as of 8/26). At the very least, with such lavish spending, Americans must live longer than other people. Sorry to disappoint but on this metric of a functioning healthcare system, they’re odd man out again. Life expectancy in the US fell from 78.9 years in 2019 to 76.6 years in 2021 – now more than five years less than the average among comparable nations.
Inequality has become the bugaboo for patients. For big-time wheeler-dealer health insurance CEOs, it’s a gold rush. The CEO of UnitedHealth, the largest insurance company in the U.S., made off with 142.2 million, his “compensation” in 2021 although he retired in February 2021. Regeneron’s CEO Len Schleifer pocketed a jaw-dropping $453 million. Eli Lilly CEO David Ricks came in with a $50 million pay day, AbbVie’s CEO Richard Gonzalez $45 million. Like their CEOs, their insurance companies were rolling in dough with revenues at the top six health insurances companies topping $1.1 trillion in 2021. [Fierce Pharma, 2/11/2022]
While CEOs are building their yachts and vacationing in their mansions on Martha’s Vineyard how are ordinary American making out? According to a poll conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 100 million Americans, including 41% of American adults are in hock due to medical or dental bills. For a whopping thirty percent, the American dream has become the American nightmare — zero retirement savings or home ownership, zero chance to invest in their childrens’ education. Although we traditionally associate medical debt with older adults, the survey found that adults under thirty are nearly twice as likely to face unpayable medical bills as seniors. A big reason for that is Medicare, a poor relation to a national healthcare system but still a Godsend to seniors. With mounting medical debt among younger Americans, it’s a real head scratcher to understand why the cost savings in Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, negligible as they are, don’t offer younger Americans some debt relief. Guess that’s why the healthcare industry sends 1,500 hundred lobbyists to Congress (almost 3 per Congress person) and has already spent over a hundred million dollars in 2022 bribing representatives and senators. Did that money prevent real healthcare reform? You betcha. Even the bill’s health care “reforms,” minimal as they are, don’t start for three years.
Meanwhile it’s business as usual. Three companies — Eli Lilly, Sanofi and Novo Nordisk who control the insulin market put a price tag of as much as 5,000% above cost on insulin products. Of the eight million Americans who need insulin to stay alive, four and one-half million are under 65. Bowing to their major donors at Big Pharma, an obedient Congress stripped out the provision in the Inflation Reduction Act that put a $35 monthly cap on insulin prices for everyone with health insurance. The law as passed restricts the cap to the three million Medicare beneficiaries. For Big Pharma money well spent. For the American people another betrayal by their elected representatives and the president.
While we’re digging through the trash heap that has become US healthcare, let’s not forget employer-sponsored healthcare. Healthcare honchos have convinced many American workers that national health insurance (aka Medicare-for-all) is too damn expensive when the alternative is “low cost” insurance tied to their job. Then came the pandemic and almost 15 million Americans lost their jobs. Do you know what else they lost? Their health insurance. Employer health insurance also became increasingly more expensive — in the last decade (2011-2021) family premiums jumped close to 50% while deductibles and copays were rising by 70% — and offer less and less coverage.
Even the Federal Reserve, the bankers BFF, had to admit in 2022 what everyone else had known for decades. Inequality in America is now officially a pandemic where the top 1% hold 31.8% of the national wealth. The bottom half 2.8%.
Beware of the dog’s breakfast politicians (both democrats and republicans) will try hand you about how democracy in America has a leveling effect on economic outcomes. Poppycock. It doesn’t because the U.S. isn’t a democracy. Here’s the real scoop—“Functioning democracy means that there’s a correlation between the will of the people and the policies that affect them” [whereas] “you [U.S. public] let the politicians do whatever they want to do” [The US] may call itself democratic, but in essence, it’s an oligarchy,” [Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, former UN expert on equitable international order]
The exponential growth of the class divide between the “haves” and the “have nots” in America’s is more than enough evidence that the US government is controlled and run by a rich and powerful elite representing themselves and their business interests. They freely and openly use their leverage over candidates who need their money to win to keep their tax burden to the government they own virtually non-existent while minimum wage workers earn less than they did in the 60s.
Ordinary citizens from the middle class on down and their interest groups have little to no influence in decisions affecting their economic and political rights. Economic inequality is baked into the cake of oligarchic rule.
Here’s the proof. “When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites…, they generally lose. Moreover… even when… large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it…while a proposed change with high support [among elite Americans] is adopted about 45% of the time.” [“Testing theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups and Average Citizens,” by Professor Benjamin I. Page)
The next time your senator or representative tries to convince you that your vote is the solution to inequality, best to stay home or go fishing.
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