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The recent shooting of a U.S. healthcare executive has prompted a rare moment of public attention to the horrific exploitation of the poor that goes on in the richest country in the world. The real problem is that nothing will change as a result. Could the murder trigger change? Some awareness reboot may occur but the chosen tool  of the perpetrator - a pistol - is distinctively American in its simultaneous triggering of sympathy for the shooter - morally outraged for good reason:injustice - but also, ironically, for the victim (shot in the back while walking to or from his work of denying access to care to non-subscribers). Real change requires coherent political action, a movement. A one-off assassination of an executive won't do it: in fact it may do the opposite. If something good is to some out of he murder it must be that more people see the futility of one-off murders and the need for the harder task of raising awareness of the need for moral and political change. Were it not that "woke" buzz has already trivialized moral awakening the woke metaphor could be hailed as socially progressive, but unfortunately it is as likely to "buzzify" a key social issue and awaken sympathy for the executives who are just "doing their job" by putting a punitive price .on a basic right. Thousands are killed and injured every day in he U.S, for lack of care but the real problem is not un-woke executives but the private insurance institutions that charge money for the privilege of staying healthy. What is needed is an adequately publicly funded system of the kind available in the vast majority of truly, nit nominally, developed nations. Want to be really woke? Awaken a movement for a public healthcare system and outlaw charging for healthcare.  

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# posted by Taodhg @ 12:32 am