Force the Bucket

(Warning: If you want Medicare for all in this country, reading this article will not get you any closer.)

For my American readers, what would you do to make Medicare for All a reality? If some supervillain (we'll call him Dr  Pharm) had the power to make it happen today but refused until you, dear reader, ate a bucket of monkey shit and licked the bucket clean would you do it?  The offer expires at midnight.  We're talking about people's lives here!   If you don't do it, now who's the supervillain? 

When House Freedom caucus members denied Kevin McCarthy Speaker of the House 14 times until he met their demands, I knew it was only a matter of time before the Force the Vote fiasco would come back up in our stupid online discourse.  Of course it would.  It hasn't always needed a context in the intervening years since Nancy Pelosi's re-election as Speaker of the House in January 2021 the event around which it was introduced and has ever since served as a sectarian wedge between those who want Medicare for all and those who don't want it badly enough.  The Freedom Caucus members proved that the strategy of withholding votes for Speaker of the House in exchange for demands worked-- although in McCarthy's case, the "Medicare for all" level concession was a promise not to raise the debt ceiling-- providing the typical excuse for further unpopular, drastic impositions of austerity on the few benefits from their government that average working and unemployed Americans might still receive .  Essentially the Freedom Caucus's maneuver provided cover for McCarthy to promise to push through what no Republican worth his or her salt would have to think twice about voting for. 

But what went wrong with Force the Vote and why do we not yet have Medicare for All?

The US alone among the wealthiest nations treats health care as a privilege for its citizens rather than a right. It fosters this through a system that puts the onus of paying for it on the individual rather on society, such that it is "affordable" only to those who can afford it, to those who have a job that provides insurance to cover some of it (i.e., of that which is covered by the policy after paying premiums, deductibles and co-pays), or who are named as beneficiaries of someone who meets either of the other 2 conditions-- a situation which forces countless millions of people to remain at jobs or in relationships that are not good for their health or to do without health care. This ridiculous system is yet another example of an American theocracy that is based on a reverence for the Invisible Hand of the "free market" which shoehorns everything it can touch into the narrowest parameters that still make someone a profit.  It's a fucked up way of doing anything, and health outcomes in this most expensive and highly developed system of medical delivery show it. 

In 2016 and again in 2020 as a pandemic bore down on the planet, Bernie Sanders raised America's consciousness about a simple fix that would obviously, with 2 minutes of unencumbered thought, solve so many problems: single payer healthcare.  With "Medicare for All" as it was called to reflect the proposed method of delivery through the expansion of the existing Medicare program originally designed and implemented for older Americans or those unable to work to all citizens as a right-- like 17 other nations already do*-- Americans would save money on the high premiums and deductibles they were currently paying, paying less money in taxes for universal coverage and nothing at the point of delivery of healthcare including in the pharmacy.  No more lives destroyed by accidents, unexpected hospital stays and chronic disease diagnoses.  From the perspective of all but the theocrats and their enablers in Congress, Medicare for all was a real no-brainer.  Which is why the media -- so well funded by Pharmaceuticals which stood to finally have to negotiate their prices with one payer rather having free reign over the price of prescriptions-- were so obnoxious about giving the idea a hearing.  It's also partly why even with the COVID crisis deepening, causing ultimately well over a million deaths in the US, Medicare for All's greatest articulator and champion, Bernie Sanders was defeated in the primary following the lockstep withdrawal from the race of every other candidate, by a deeply entrenched centrist democrat who had vowed loudly to veto Medicare for All if it came across his desk. Biden's win in the primary was expected, but to many Bernie supporters, his win in the general was not.† And yet he won, demonstrating yet again that opposing Medicare for All is not a fatal liability for Democrats at the polls.

Enter Force the Vote.  This was the notion raised by some on the internet in December 2020 (while storms of accusations of stolen elections were stinking up the air) that leftists should apply heavy pressure on members of the "squad" and the progressive caucus in congress to withhold their votes for Nancy Pelosi's upcoming re-election to Speaker of the House in exchange for a floor vote on Medicare for All.  No one who knows about these things believed a floor vote in the House on Medicare for all would come close to passing, but  this was still proffered as a worthy outcome since it would force opponents of it to out themselves to their constituents.  As an idea in itself, it deserved to be judged on its merits and it was.  The pressure that was applied (much of it in tweets at Squad members) was not promising in advance of the January 3 vote.  Alexandria Ocasio Cortez herself signaled her lack of enthusiasm for the idea on the basis of "So you issue threats, hold your vote, and lose. Then what?"  At this point, the notion that leftists would come together on Twitter to force progressives in congress to Force the Vote evaporated.  Camps formed.  There were intimations that machinations behind the scenes were sweetening the support of progressives for Pelosi's re-election working against the tactic.  In the end all members of the squad along with all but 6 democrats voted for Pelosi's re-election, defeating McCarthy 216 to 209.  Three days later, with left twitter already fully erupted in the aftermath of Pelosi's reelection into tweeted fisticuffs, January 6th happened.

The problem with Force the Vote is that it didn't work.  What's more it morphed from its ostensible mission which was health care for all, to essentially the go to meme for owning the shit-libs.  And it fails even at that!  The shit-libs are not owned by it!  Two years have passed since it  died on the vine and yet it hangs in the air like a bad shit. If anything it has gotten us further away from Medicare for All by creating a ridiculous admission price in far too many circles for left solidarity to the cause, distracting leftist energy in pointless counterfactual interminable internecine internet battles.  It remains an excuse for that contingent to blame tweeters who disagree with them for its failure as a tactic.  And it provides yet another distraction from actual work that needs to be done to make Medicare for All (while we wait for revolution) a reality.  

So you issued threats, withheld your vote and you don't have Medicare for All.  Now what?§

~~~~~

* Per Google: Norway, Japan, United Kingdom, Kuwait, Sweden, Bahrain, Canada, United Arab Emirates, Denmark, Finland, Slovenia, Italy, Portugal, Cyprus, Spain, and Iceland.  There is some overlap of this list with the 11 countries in Africa, 21 in Asia, 30 in Europe, 6 in North America, 6 in South America and 2 in Oceania that provide Universal Healthcare outright or in addition to Single Payer.

† I include myself who did not withhold a vote for Biden as a lonely feeble-ass punishment for his posturing on Medicare for All contrary to what was recommended by some commenters.  I find this quote from one of them on the topic at the aforementioned link stunningly self-revealing: 

Disgruntled progressives who made up a significant part of the Democratic Party base had dutifully voted Biden into office—despite warnings from people like myself that doing so without conditions would mean that he would ultimately betray most if not all of his campaign promises.

Really?  My vote is why things have fundamentally changed for Biden's donors?   Oh they haven't?

§ To those who say eat the bucket of monkey shit, I suggest that there better be some of us trying to defeat Dr Pharm in case that doesn't happen.