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      in World Politics

      “Freedom” Failed to Set Americans Free

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      A little over a month ago, those who were fully COVID-19 vaccinated in America were feeling pretty good about themselves and their prospects for a summer of wining, dining and a bit of travel. The kiddies, even though unvaccinated, could for some unexplained reason do camp, amusement parks and movies with a return to full in-person schooling to come. And just to show how far we had come in turning back the viral tide, those masks could be washed and stored away to await the next pandemic.

      So, what happened? First, a lot of ignorant and selfish people decided not only to stay that way, but to avoid COVID vaccinations as well. They started getting sick and dying, but not enough of them did so to end the plague. Instead, they just spread the disease, now a highly contagious variant, to other unvaccinated people. Then, something really bad happened: It was soon discovered that those ignorant and selfish people were also spreading the disease to vaccinated people, who just haven’t started dying in large numbers, at least not yet.

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      Meanwhile, the commercial machine and its political allies were ramping up to open everything and let the good times roll. It quickly became hard to find a seat at the bar or a hotel room at the beach. Airports and airplanes were filled again with vacationing families, rental cars were so scarce that it is hard to imagine that turnaround time included a drop of disinfectant, and those ever-popular buffet tables were dusted off for the hungry hoards. Forgetting your mask at home or in the car was deemed to be of little consequence.

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      The US federal government response was to go all in on vaccines as the obvious path to public health and commercial revitalization. The vaccines are now everywhere to be had and free of charge. The only problem with this plan is that it is playing out in America, where freedom is defined by way too many as not having to do anything you don’t want to do that you can get away with. The well-being of others be damned.

      This situation would be easy to ignore if it involved only a fringe group of pock-marked anti-vaccine individualists whose children regularly get the measles and who never go to school. But this time, for some reason, the vaccine-resistant crowd also includes a large percentage of Republicans who are not pock-marked and whose children get a whole raft of vaccines so they can go to school. Then throw in a bunch of members of religious covens whose leaders are chatting with their god about this issue and then let the flock in on the big secret that their god definitely isn’t vaccinated against COVID-19 (even though there seems to be some disagreement about god’s smallpox vaccination status).

      “Freedom”

      There are more ironies here than I can keep up with. Let’s start with “freedom” of choice. Many of those resistant to vaccines resist government “interference” in personal health choices, even though many of those same people are fully engaged in trying to get that same government to prevent women from making their own reproductive choices. Think about that for a moment.

      More ironic yet, many of those in the “freedom” crowd seem untroubled by most government health mandates, yet all of a sudden, putting a vaccine in their bodies to help themselves and others avoid the ravages of a relentless virus has become some political and social litmus test for them. Seatbelt requirements, drinking and driving prohibitions, no smoking in restaurants, a host of required vaccines for employment, travel and schooling all make the good health mandate list. Meanwhile, mindless resistance to life-saving COVID vaccines and masking requirements has become a right-wing badge of honor, generally until the bodies of right-wing family and friends start piling up.

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      However, maybe the grandest irony of all is that the leader of the pack of virus resisters, Donald Trump, is himself fully vaccinated, as are at least his wife and the precious Ivanka. It is bad enough that the Trump clan lied its way to prominence and supposed wealth and that when empowered to do the right thing almost always did the wrong thing. Then, when a pandemic was inserted into the mix, the whole crew conspired to undermine any meaningful national response while over 500,000 people in America died on their watch. While others were gasping for their last breath, Trump got vaccinated just to make sure it wouldn’t be him on that ventilator.

      You would think that as the actions of the Trump clan played out before adoring eyes, those ignorant and selfish acolytes would be pushing others out of the way to get vaccinated. But instead, they can’t wait to parade their “freedom” from vaccine tyranny at every super spreader event they can find, while the vaccinated and protected leader of the pack cheers them on. This seems to work really well until that stairway to heaven leads to a COVID ward in a local hospital surrounded by other ignorant and selfish people, many of whom now use their last breathes to beg for the vaccine.

      Another Wave

      In the face of this insanity, it seems that it is slowly dawning on some public officials that another wave of deadly COVID disease and disorder is closing in. Lots of parents are suddenly worried about their children, some private concerns are worried about something other than their short-term bottom line, and lots of people anticipating a return to crowded workplaces and those already there are staying home. There are even a few people with September travel plans suddenly concerned that playa wherever will be a petri dish when they get there. More importantly, it may be sinking in that there is only one way out of this: mandated vaccines wherever the authority exists to mandate them.

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      To do this, there can be no more coddling of the ignorant and selfish. Get vaccinated or get out. Everywhere that the federal government has the authority to do so should require proof of vaccine for employment and entry. Start with federal buildings, museums and entertainment venues, airplanes and trains, and the military and military bases. Examine every interstate commerce authority for ways to tighten the vise. No vaccine, no entry, period.

      In those pathetic states and localities where resistance overwhelms public health, everything that can be done to isolate those populations from the rest of us needs to be done. No conventions in Atlanta, no cruise ships docking in Miami, interstate highway dead zones, hotel and restaurant chains shuttering their venues, testing and mask mandates for those who knowingly come in contact with the unvaccinated while engaging in interstate commerce, and no event licenses or advertising dollars to sports and entertainment venues that won’t mandate vaccines for entry.

      If this gets done before the viability of today’s vaccines begins to wane or is crushed by new COVID-19 mutations, Americans, at least, have a chance to put the pandemic behind them. We are lucky that we have this opportunity at all, but we can only take advantage of it if we move swiftly and decisively to mandate vaccines and isolate those who won’t comply. If accomplished, America might then have the moral authority, the scientific and manufacturing strength, and the financial resources to lead the rest of the world to the same place.

      *[This article was co-published on the author’s blog, Hard Left Turn.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in US Politics

      Contempt for the unvaccinated is a temptation to be resisted | Dan Brooks

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      OpinionCoronavirusContempt for the unvaccinated is a temptation to be resistedDan BrooksThe narrative of a dangerously ignorant minority may appeal, but it is not good for democracy Mon 2 Aug 2021 11.50 EDTLast modified on Mon 2 Aug 2021 13.38 EDTThe Covid-19 pandemic was the perfect disaster for our cultural moment, because it made other people being wrong on the internet a matter of life and death.My use of the past tense here is aspirational. The emergence of the more contagious Delta variant threatens to undo a lot of progress – particularly here in the US, where active cases of coronavirus infection are up 149% from two weeks ago. Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that fully vaccinated people return to wearing masks indoors in public spaces. The hope that this summer would mark our return to normal is curdling fast, and the enlightened majority – the fact-based, Facebook-sceptical, and fully vaccinated – are looking for someone to blame.A moralist might argue that the Delta variant is poetic justice in light of the US government’s reluctance to provide free vaccines to places such as India, where it first emerged. The notion that doses should be saved for Americans or exported at profit was selfish and shortsighted, and now the chickens (germs) have come home to roost (sickened millions). But this sort of pitiless self-recrimination is so old-fashioned. The modern person prefers to lay blame where it rests more comfortably: on other, dumber people. Take this tweet from a sportswriter, which implied that the people of Alabama – where the vaccination rate lingers at about 34% – would get the jab if the alternative meant no American football. Such remarks often play on the association between the American south and a certain type of person: culturally conservative, frequently undereducated, more interested in sports on TV than pandemics in the newspaper. This person, a kind of back-formation from various statistical trends, has become a familiar scapegoat during the coronavirus pandemic. They represent the obstinate minority – 30% of adults in the US – whose refusal to get vaccinated threatens to mess up the recovery for the rest of us.This narrative, which has become especially popular among American liberals, excoriates imaginary dummies instead of confronting the problems that have discouraged people from getting the jab. These problems include an employer-based healthcare system that favours professionals with permanent jobs and makes it difficult for many Americans to form trusting relationships with doctors. According to Kaiser Health News, the demographic with the lowest vaccination rate in the United States is uninsured people under the age of 65. The difficulty of reaching this group has been compounded by a world-historical explosion of misinformation and a political culture bent on pandering to it.The insistence, among the Republican leadership in the spring of 2020, that Covid-19 was a glorified version of the flu guaranteed that responses to the pandemic would shake out along political and, therefore, cultural lines. In places such as Alabama, not getting the vaccine has more to do with socio-economic identity than with scientific literacy. This is a fatal flaw in the reasoning of unvaccinated people, who are absolutely wrong in a way that endangers not only themselves but also others. But given the haughty reaction of many liberals, can you blame them? Even as the cost of their obstinacy has become grimly clear, the cost of admitting they were wrong has risen; to get the vaccine now would be to kowtow to a class that holds them in contempt. The notion that a vocal minority of our fellow citizens threaten to undo us with their ignorance has become something of a master narrative in anglophone democracies over the past five years. Trump did it for a lot of American Democrats in 2016, and Brexit – which, unlike Trump, won popular support at the polls but, like Trump, was overwhelmingly opposed by the urban and higher-educated – had a similar effect in the UK. The current Republican mania for making voting more difficult seems to be a product of Trump’s loss in November. Last week, a Pew Research Center poll found that 42% of respondents agreed with the statement: “Voting is a privilege that comes with responsibilities and can be limited.” This attitude is fundamentally incompatible with democracy.Don’t blame young people for vaccine hesitancy. The vast majority of us want to get jabbed | Lara SpiritRead moreThe belief that the masses are fundamentally decent and capable of governing themselves – or at least qualified to select leaders capable of governing for them – has been badly dented by social media, which confronts us with the ignorance of strangers at high volume every day. Basic forms of empathy, emerging from real-life communication, are fading from modern democracy, washed out of our assessment of the average stranger by a high-pressure spray of anonymous idiots on the internet.I think we should resist the urge to hold the unvaccinated in contempt. Their premises are wrong, but they are doing what we want citizens in a democracy to do: thinking for themselves, questioning authority, refusing to submit to a class they perceive as bent on ruling them by fiat. The fact that they are doing these things in the service of dangerous misinformation is a terrible irony, and it threatens the stability of 21st-century democracy.Covid-19 might be the most convincing counterargument to the western liberal tradition we see in our lifetimes. It offers a counterexample to two foundational ideas: that ordinary people can recognise their own best interests, and that the minority who do not can be afforded their freedom without endangering the rest of us. A plague is one of those classic exceptions that appears in the literature of political science again and again. I don’t know if existing systems can withstand it. I do know that, like a marriage, a democracy can survive anything but contempt.
      Dan Brooks writes essays, fiction and commentary from Missoula, Montana
      TopicsCoronavirusOpinionInfectious diseasesUS politicsVaccines and immunisationHealthcommentReuse this content More

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      in UK Politics

      Prime minister warned of allowing Covid variant to ‘run rampant’ by easing travel restrictions

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      Boris Johnson risks allowing a new Covid variant to “run rampant” through the country by further easing restrictions for EU and US travellers, Labour has warned.People visiting from the US and the EU who are fully vaccinated against coronavirus will be allowed to enter England without the need to quarantine from next week.The new rules will come into effect at 4am on Monday, with transport secretary Grant Shapps expressing hopes the US will become more relaxed about allowing Britons to visit “in time”.But following an encouraging few days in which Covid-19 case numbers in the UK have fallen from above 50,000 on 17 July to 27,734 by 9am on Wednesday, Labour sounded warnings over the impact of the travel changes.Shadow transport secretary Jim McMahon said: “The government’s track record on our borders has been one of recklessness and confusion.“They are in danger of continuing this by setting out changes in policy, applying to England only, without the scientific data and criteria we need to make sure we don’t see another Johnson variant run rampant through the country and damage the effort of the British public.“We want to see international travel opened up safely.“Ministers need to be clear on what progress has been made on reaching reciprocal agreements for Brits travelling abroad – particularly regarding the NHS app being accepted as proof of Covid status.“We also need a clear green and red list and the country-by-country data to back it up.”The rule change will also apply to fully vaccinated EU and US visitors to Scotland from Monday.The Welsh government said it “regrets” the move to remove the quarantine requirement in England, but added it would be “ineffective” to have different rules for Wales.Ministers in Northern Ireland will consider their position on the charge at Thursday’s meeting of the powersharing executive.Currently, only travellers who have received two doses of a vaccine in the UK are permitted to enter from an amber country – such as the US and most of the EU – without self-isolating for 10 days, except those returning from France.Professor Christina Pagel, director of the clinical operational research unit at UCL, said she was worried about variants that are better at infecting people who are already vaccinated given that those who are fully vaccinated could still catch and pass on the virus.Speaking to the Guardian, she said a “worrying new variant could emerge” in the US or Europe – or “a variant that emerges anywhere will spread everywhere” if travel were less inhibited between those places and the UK.Hailing the policy change, Mr Shapps said: “Whether you are a family reuniting for the first time since the start of the pandemic or a business benefiting from increased trade, this is progress we can all enjoy.”Asked whether he was confident the US and Europe would reciprocate in allowing fully vaccinated travellers from England without needing to quarantine, Mr Shapps said: “I’ve just spoken to my US counterpart today and in the US they still have an executive order which prevents travel from the UK, from Europe, from several other countries to the US.“So we’re saying, ‘You can come here, you can come visit, you can come see friends, you can come as a tourist if you’ve been double vaccinated and follow the rules without quarantine’.“We can’t change that on the other side but we do expect that in time they will release that executive order, which was actually signed by the previous president, and bans inward travel.”Additional reporting by Press Association More

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      in UK Politics

      Ex-minister Ken Clarke ‘not responsible’ for blood products in early days of infection scandal, inquiry hears

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      The former health minister Ken Clarke has said he was “not responsible” for blood products in the early days of the infected blood scandal, an inquiry heard.Appearing before the Infected Blood Inquiry on Tuesday to give evidence over three days, Lord Clarke said the controversy surrounding the blood products was something that “hardly ever came across my desk”.He said at the time he was distracted with policies such as closing “old Victorian asylums” and removing “old geriatric hospitals”.The infected blood scandal, which emerged in the 1980s, saw thousands diagnosed with HIV/Aids or hepatitis after receiving blood product treatments for haemophilia.An inquiry seeking answers for those who were affected by the transfusions started hearing evidence in April 2019.Lord Clarke, who held the position of health minister from 1982 to 1985 and was health secretary from 1988 to 1990, told lead counsel Jenni Richards QC: “As the tragedy with the haemophiliacs developed, I was aware it was there. From time to time, usually on my own instigation, I got on the edge of it.“I didn’t call meetings on it. I was never the minister directly responsible for blood products. I was never asked to take a decision on blood products. “I never intervened to take a decision on blood products. I did intervene or get involved in discussions a bit when I wanted to be reassured.”“When I arrived (as health minister), the idea that blood products was a very big part of the department’s activity is simply not true.“It was a very specialist, usually quiet, harmless, subject and was one of the few areas where we didn’t have controversy and there wasn’t very much for the department to do because the blood transfusion service ran itself.”Ms Richards asked: “Do you accept that the (health) department and ministers within the department had a responsibility to ensure the treatment being provided through the National Health Service was safe?”Lord Clarke responded: “Yes, that’s why we have this network of safety of medicines committees, licensing authorities. They have legal power… to make sure you don’t have some eccentric doctor who is prescribing things which are not actually clinically proven or recommended.“Never does the minister personally start intervening and imposing a personal decision on what treatment the patients (get).”In 1972, the UK approved a new version of Factor VIII, a blood clotting protein which helps prevent bleeds from happening, to be used to treat haemophilia patients in Britain.Blood products later began being imported from overseas after the production of Factor VIII in the UK was considered to be insufficient to meet demand.By 1983, fears had been raised that the blood products contained hepatitis and HIV/Aids.It was later found that many people with the condition had been given blood products, such as plasma, which were infected with hepatitis and HIV.The inquiry continues.Additional reporting by PA More

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      in UK Politics

      Covid: Dangerous new variants will emerge unless rich countries share vaccines, UK adviser warns

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      The world is at risk of harmful new Covid-19 variants emerging unless the UK and other wealthy nations share more vaccines, a government adviser has warned.It is likely new and “dangerous” variants will emerge which will “chip away” at the effectiveness of vaccines unless there is a global plan of action, the Wellcome Trust and Institute for Government (IfG) think tanks have warned.A joint report released on Monday said the recent G7 summit was a wasted opportunity to come up with a global response – warning highly-vaccinated countries like the UK not to view the crisis as nearly over.“If we don’t vaccinate the world we’re in danger of generating new variants, which, like the Delta variant, will come back to all of us in the future – and they may be much worse than Delta,” said Wellcome director Sir Jeremy Farrar, one of the UK government’s Sage advisers.Sir Jeremy added: “For geopolitics, for science and public health, and for the moral and ethical argument, we have to make the vaccine available globally. And I’m afraid, to date, we’ve failed to do that.”The joint report released on Monday said low and middle-income countries are still only sequencing a tiny proportion of Covid cases – leaving the planet “flying blind” when it comes to tracking and responding to potential new variants.In the run-up to the G20 meeting in October, the report calls on governments to respond to the challenge with much stronger commitment to sharing vaccinations and virus surveillance – as well as boosting healthcare capacity.The report also says global leaders must define an acceptable level of domestic vaccination and supply, and agree what surplus vaccines can be committed to the global effort.The report states: “With approaching half a million new cases being recorded per day globally – a figure that is rising – it is likely that further dangerous variants will emerge.”It adds: “While most scientists do not currently expect a new variant to emerge that will fully evade vaccines, what are more likely are variants that ‘chip away’ at vaccines’ effectiveness.”Urging wealthy nation government to commit greater resources, the report finds that vaccinating the whole world to the level of rich countries requires around 11 billion doses at a cost of around £36bn – around £26bn more than has so far been spent.“One of my major concerns is that the rich world … will gradually move in what I would call a good direction,” Sir Jeremy told a virtual IfG event on Monday – hailing the “extraordinary achievement” of the UK’s vaccine roll-out.“Tragically though, the rest of the world is a very different position, with less than 1 per cent of populations in low-income countries vaccinated.”Reflecting on the mistakes made by Boris Johnson’s government in 2020, Sir Jeremy said he “regrets” the failure to re-impose restrictions in England last autumn, as Covid cases kept on rising.“I do regret the decision and delays in the fourth quarter of 2020 which led to the January-February wave and yes, the loss of life then,” he added.“Was the delay during the autumn of 2020 the right decision? It was not the right decision.” More

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      in UK Politics

      Covid vaccines ‘thrown away as not enough people coming forward’

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      Those administering coronavirus vaccines are allegedly being told to throw away stock due to a drop in younger people opting to get their first jab, reports suggest.Attempts to use surplus vaccines on people awaiting their second jab are also being thwarted due to strict guidance set out by the government, which states jabs must be given at last eight weeks apart, an anonymous source told the Daily Telegraph.“For the last two weeks we have literally been throwing the vaccine into the bin,” the vaccinator, from the northeast of England, said. They added that most people who want their first dose have already come forward but “hesitancy” is stopping more people from coming forward. More than 87 per cent of the population have received their first vaccination, but that falls significantly to just below 60 per cent for 18- to 25-year-olds. “Some aren’t turning up because they’ve had a vaccine elsewhere,” the source claimed, while criticising the wasteful attitude of throwing the medicine away.“It is a shame because poorer countries are desperate for vaccines,” they said.The Joint Committee for Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) currently recommends an interval of eight to 12 weeks between Covid-19 vaccine doses, on the back of studies suggesting it offers greater immunity.Scientists this week described the eight-week interval as a “sweet spot” for those getting the Pfizer jab, after research showed the wait time generates more neutralising antibodies and “helper” T cells against Delta and other variants of concern than a three-week schedule.Vaccinators have been told to follow the guidance strictly, which sometimes means throwing vaccine away instead of giving it to people earlier, the unnamed source said.It is not the first time such claims have been made. Back in February, GP magazine Pulse revealed that in an email, the British Medical Association (BMA) said it was continuing to hear reports of Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) “demanding that vaccines are thrown away” rather than being given as second doses or to “other cohorts”.Despite there being the same ban then on shortening the gap between first and second doses as it is now, the BMA reminded GPs they could carry out measures such as offering initial jabs outside the first four priority cohorts if there is a “risk” of vaccine wastage.In the email, sent to GP practices across the country, the BMA said: “We would like to reiterate that NHSE/I has made it clear that the top priority is that all vaccines be used and therefore must not be deliberately wasted.“All sites should have reserve lists that they can use to make every effort to invite patients or healthcare professionals to ensure that they can make full use of any unused vaccines rather than have any go to waste.”Some medical professionals are now calling for the gap between doses to be reduced to as low as four weeks to avoid vaccine waste. Paul Hunter, professor of medicine at the University of East Anglia, said cutting the interval for Pfizer and Moderna for younger people could even be beneficial. “If we are giving younger people that extra immunity earlier on, that might actually help slow the rate [of infection] or even reverse it in cases,” he told the Telegraph. Nadhim Zahawi, the vaccines minister, this week stood by the government’s decision to stick to the eight-week gap as advised by the JCVI. “As we raced to offer a vaccine to all adults, we took the JCVI’s advice to shorten the dosing interval from 12 to eight weeks to help protect more people against the Delta variant,” he said. “I urge every adult to get both doses of the vaccine to protect yourself and those around you and we are looking to offer millions of the most vulnerable a booster jab from September to ensure this protection is maintained.”The Independent has been in touch with the Department of Health and Social Care for comment. More

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      in US Politics

      Like millions of Americans, I can never leave my spouse. I’ll lose my healthcare | Jessa Crispin

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      OpinionUS healthcareLike millions of Americans, I can never leave my spouse. I’ll lose my healthcareJessa CrispinMy access to doctors is tied to my husband – and his access is tied to his employer. Land of the free indeed Fri 23 Jul 2021 06.17 EDTLast modified on Fri 23 Jul 2021 07.03 EDTIt was around the second dose of fentanyl going into my IV bag that I stopped trying to control how much all of this was going to cost. I had been arguing with every decision the caregivers at the emergency room were making – “Is this Cat scan actually necessary or is there another diagnostic tool?” “Is there a cheaper version of this drug you’re giving me?” – and reminding them repeatedly that I was uninsured, but either the opioids in my bloodstream, or the exhaustion of trying to rest in a room next to a woman who, given the sounds she was making, was clearly transforming into a werewolf, forced me to surrender.Why is a 108-year-old resorting to GoFundMe to pay for home care? | Ross BarkanRead moreI walked out of there four years ago alive, yes. And, as the doctors and nurses kept reminding me, if I had waited another 48 hours to discover I didn’t actually have the magical ability to self-diagnose and self-treat serious problems with Google and herbs, I might have gone septic. But all said and done, I was also walking home to a $12,000 bill, which was approximately half of my annual income as a single woman.It took me several years of hardship, contributions from my friends and the assistance of the hospital’s charity program to pay off the $12,000.Then, last month, it started again. I was at home. I turned my head a little, the whole world started sliding away from me, and I crashed to the floor. I tried to crawl back into bed, insisting, “It’ll pass, it’ll pass.” My husband, on the other hand, was raised in a country with compulsory public health coverage, so his first instinct upon something weird happening isn’t to lie down for 48 hours and see if it goes away. He immediately started plotting the route to a hospital on his phone.I was back, but this time I was married. The whole hospital visit cost us $30, including the prescription. Everything was covered by his insurance. That’s when I realized I can never divorce my husband.The first emergency room visit might have been an anomaly – a freak health problem that the nurse explained as “sometimes these things happen”. The intense vertigo was the result of the deterioration of the condition of my ears. It has been a problem since childhood, one left in “let’s wait and see what happens” condition until a weird virus last year – yes, I was the big idiot who caught a debilitating non-coronavirus virus during a coronavirus pandemic – forced me to a doctor, who discovered significant hearing loss and structural damage that will require lifelong treatment and intervention.As a freelance writer who has tried and failed for years now to get a real job with real benefits, the costs of the surgeries and hearing aids and other treatments the doctor sketched out as part of my future would be suffocating. But almost all of it is covered by my husband’s insurance, making my health and ability to access healthcare dependent on his presence in my life.While I convalesced from the virus last year, I watched the discussion about health insurance take over the Democratic primary debates. I had little hope that the bright, sparkly Medicare for All plan championed by candidates like Bernie Sanders would be made reality. But still I despaired of the excuses other candidates made for why they did not support guaranteed coverage for all. It angered me to see Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg and the eventual winner, Joe Biden, defend their plans to largely maintain the status quo – a system in which employment and marriage determine access to healthcare – as though they were protecting our “freedom” to “choose” coverage that was right for us.The coercions built into American social welfare programs limit freedom, not preserve it. People who are not financially independent are forced to maintain ties with family members who might be abusive or violent unless they want to relinquish their housing, healthcare or other forms of support. And as outlined by Melinda Cooper’s Family Values: Between Neoliberalism and the New Social Conservatism, the dismantling of protections like food and financial aid in the 80s and 90s had the express purpose of increasing familial obligations in the name of “duty” and “responsibility”. Single parents seeking public support for their children’s wellbeing now had to first seek assistance through their partners, no matter how fraught or harmful those relationships might be. While politicians spoke of “strengthening families” and repairing the social fabric, one of the consequences of these policy changes was to limit the ability for people to make the basic decisions required to live the lives of their choosing, unless they had the money that in this country is our substitute for freedom.It’s not just unhealthy families we are stuck in: a Gallup poll revealed that one in six Americans stay in jobs they want to leave because they can’t afford to lose their health benefits. Politicians on both sides claim to support innovation and entrepreneurship, but the cost of healthcare is a huge barrier for many, and something that could be easily resolved with a public option. It’s almost as if we believe people who are sick, unlucky or not blessed by inherited resources deserve to have their choices constrained and stay trapped in perilous circumstances. (That last part is a joke. We Americans definitely believe this.)We have a Democrat-led Congress and a Democratic president, yet there is no public option or significant overhaul of our broken health insurance system on the horizon. As a result, when my husband got offered his dream job at an emerging non-profit startup, one so new that when the offer was made they could not yet offer health benefits, he hesitated. There would be a gap in coverage, of indeterminate length, and there was still that $12,000 emergency room visit in recent memory.In the end, simply by luck, the startup found a way to enroll employees in a health program that left us with only a one-month gap in coverage. I am lucky to be married to someone I like, who I am not afraid of, who I do not want to leave. This hasn’t always been the case for women in my family, or even myself in my 20s. For now, and for the foreseeable future, my access to doctors is tied to my partner, and his to his employer. Land of the free indeed.
      Jessa Crispin is a Guardian US columnist
      TopicsUS healthcareOpinionUS politicsHealth insuranceHealthcare industryInsurance industryHealthcommentReuse this content More