Dwain Northey (Gen X)

The Capitalist Fever Dream and the Healthcare Circle Jerk

I genuinely cannot wrap my head around the libertarian-themed masturbation festival that passes for Republican healthcare policy. You know the one: a room full of very serious people, furiously congratulating themselves for discovering that healthcare is not a benefit to society—while standing in a society, breathing public air, driving on public roads, protected by public fire departments, and occasionally rescued by public emergency rooms they insist should cost the price of a small yacht.

Somehow, in this fantasy, healthcare is a personal luxury, like a Rolex or a third vacation home, rather than the basic maintenance required to keep human beings upright and functioning. Republicans—especially the Scrooge McDuck wing, swimming naked through their gold coins—have decided that the best possible system is one where Americans pay exorbitant amounts for insulin, chemotherapy, and emergency surgery, while literally every other developed nation on Earth has said, “Wow, that’s insane. Let’s not do that.”

And before anyone screams “SOCIALISM,” let’s pause and acknowledge reality: Germany has universal healthcare. Japan has universal healthcare. Canada has universal healthcare. The UK has universal healthcare. France, Australia, South Korea—pick a capitalist country, throw a dart, and chances are they figured out that sick, starving, bankrupt people make terrible workers and even worse consumers. Yet somehow, America—home of the spreadsheet warriors and MBA bros—can’t grasp this radical economic insight.

Which is wild, because this is Econ 101. Not graduate-level Marxist theory. Not a leftist manifesto. Introductory economics. A functioning capitalist system requires participation. People must be alive. People must be healthy enough to show up. People must not be one ambulance ride away from lifelong debt servitude.

If workers can’t eat, they can’t work.

If workers aren’t healthy, they can’t work.

If workers are drowning in medical debt, they can’t spend, invest, innovate, or take risks.

This isn’t ideology—it’s arithmetic.

Yet here we are, watching grown adults argue that a system where people delay cancer screenings, ration insulin, and avoid the doctor until they’re practically dead is somehow good for capitalism. Because nothing screams “robust free market” like a workforce too sick, stressed, and broke to participate in it.

The irony is breathtaking. The same people who worship at the altar of productivity, GDP, and “job creators” are actively sabotaging the very inputs their beloved system requires. They don’t want healthy workers; they want desperate ones. People chained to jobs for insurance, too afraid to quit, organize, or innovate because losing employment means losing access to basic survival.

This isn’t rugged individualism. It’s feudalism with copays.

And let’s be honest: this has nothing to do with efficiency or freedom. If it did, we’d be copying the systems that work better and cost less. This is about protecting profit margins for middlemen who add no value while extracting billions. It’s about preserving a hierarchy where pain is a feature, not a bug—because pain keeps people compliant.

So no, I still can’t wrap my head around it. A capitalism fever dream where human beings are expendable inputs, healthcare is a privilege, and society pretends this is rational. The rest of the world solved this problem decades ago—not because they’re more “left,” but because they’re more serious.

America’s healthcare debate isn’t about economics. It’s about whether we’re willing to admit the obvious: a society that refuses to keep its people healthy is not pro-capitalist, pro-freedom, or pro-anything except cruelty dressed up as ideology.