Raging Against the Machine
What does waking up to the criminality in large industry mean for us?
This post started out on the topic of power, how it concentrates, and inevitably leads to corruption. I will be writing more about money, class, power, and morality, as they are central to any conversation around sustainable systems, but I must honor what’s emerged, and fair warning- this post is definitely a little more angsty than others. I hope you enjoy the shorter read this time, and please feel free to share with anyone else you think might be interested in these issues.
A couple weeks ago I watched a talk that Bernie Sanders gave in the UK based on his new book It’s Okay to Be Angry About Capitalism. Some of these thoughts have been percolating for a while but hearing Bernie talk about how morally bankrupt our current economic system is, brought both resonance and new insight-
“…We have a health care system which is totally dysfunctional. The function of the American health care system is not to provide quality care to all people as a human right. Which is what should be the case. The function of the American health care system is to make insurance companies, as profitable as they can be.”
In this talk he also asks a big question. One that I think would be beneficial if we really took the time to hold the heart of the inquiry-
“What kind of a society do we want?”
Reminds me of another BIG question that I’ve heard Bill McDonough ask:
What is the intention of our species?
I think we need more big questions like this. And time to listen for the answers.
The run around
The last several months have been soul crushing in my interactions with insurance companies. Starting in September with my fiancé’s no-fault accident that resulted in the car being totaled, and Amber now experiencing back pain issues. Long-painful-drawn-out-story-short, the other driver was underinsured so we ended up having to go through our insurance, Geico. It took 2 months of complicated interactions with multiple adjusters and claims specialists just to get what was contractually agreed upon in our insurance policy regarding our rental.
I had to repeat back to them their legal language via tense calls and emails. Sending screenshots of the printed document with the highlighted lines of their rental reimbursement amendment, just for us to get what we were already paying for. One of the adjusters even tried sharing with me a separate document, listing a different rental reimbursement “endorsement” than the one listed on our policy.
I never got answers from Geico on why there were 2 different rental reimbursement policies floating around. I just know that after many hours of time and struggle, they finally honored that-
“…reimbursement for rental charges shall end the earliest of when the owned auto has been… deemed by us to be a total loss, then seventy two (72) hours after we pay the applicable limit of liability under Section III of the policy.”
and NOT-
“…seventy two (72) hours after our initial settlement offer”.
Most people don’t have the time or energy to follow up like this, and it’s worrying to think how many people get taken advantage of. There are very few recourses here aside from dogged diligence that is nothing short of mentally and emotionally exhausting. I think they bank on, and make bank on, most people giving up.
First, do no harm
The latest insurance saga is for the most basic of healthcare services- a physical (as in yes, an annual physical exam one is supposed to get for preventative health care purposes). I will spare you many of the details, but essentially I was told by the healthcare provider (after finding them through my insurance company’s website) that I don’t have health insurance. This is after upgrading my coverage plan for 2023, and paying over $400 a month for health insurance. By the way, and for transparency-sake an annual physical exam in the state of New York runs a little over $850 in February of 2023.
Healthcare is the largest and fastest-growing industry in the U.S. and globally, much of that growth attributed to our pernicious pill-popping population. It’s been a suspicion of mine for a long time that our food system is poisoning us and perpetuating the exponential growth of the profit-driven medical industry. I recently learned in this interview with Calley Means, an ex-big food and pharma-consultant-turned-whistleblower, that physicians in medical school are not required to take one single class on nutrition. Might these 2 things be related? How did we get here? Why do we have this system? It increasingly seems as though our industrial food system is the tail wagging the dog for the pharmaceutical industry.
What else are we being lied to about, and where else are we being intentionally misled? As an important step in becoming a doctor, medical students must take the Hippocratic Oath. And one of the promises within that oath is "first, do no harm" (or "primum non nocere," the Latin translation from the original Greek.)
If further evidence was needed of the corruption in our healthcare system, look no further than ProPublica’s latest piece:
Of course there are brilliant, gifted physicians that truly center healing and not just symptom management, like Dr. Will Cole, who just wrote a book where even the title is insightful- “Gut Feelings: Healing the Shame-Fueled Relationship Between What You Eat and How You Feel”.
In this edutaining interview conducted by Jay Shetty you can learn more about the “The Inflammatory Core Four”, the 4 food ingredients that are “most likely to disrupt our gut microbiome- the trillions of bacteria in our gut that regulate our inflammation levels, regulate hormones, regulate our brain, and neurotransmitters”.
I’ve found it to be a very instructive research method when two independent sources say the same/similar information. The Calley interview & Dr. Will interview yield a near-identical list of ubiquitous ingredients in our food supply that are making many of us sick:
gluten containing grains
industrial seed oils (vegetable oil, canola oil, soybean oil, etc.)
conventional dairy
added sugar
Birke Baehr really nailed it in his 2010 TEDx talk, when the then-11-year-old declared:
“…we can either pay the farmer, or we can pay the hospital.”
While it can feel like the cards are often stacked against us (and we know the house always wins), I find genuine hope in the autonomy and power that we all have to make better choices. Remember, it’s not an either /or, it’s a both/and. We need both top-down policy & subsidy changes, AND bottom-up, grassroots movements of individuals coming together.