With the House declining to hold a vote on the American Health Care Act, prospects for the millions who would have lost coverage aren’t quite as bleak as they seemed just a few days ago. But the bill’s lack of support came, at least in part, because it was somehow not cruel enough for the GOP’s far-right wing. Last week’s news isn’t cause for celebration because a perfect system has remained in place, then, but rather because a broken one wasn’t made worse. And regardless of what transpires with health care down the line, at a time when more than half of the country has less than $1,000 in savings in case of an emergency, it seems guaranteed that more and more people will turn to the aid of their Facebook network for health care.
For a steadily increasing number of Americans, including millions who now regularly use sites like YouCaring and GoFundMe, raising billions of dollars in charitable giving, health care has in fact become about competition, but not the kind Republicans usually talk about. Instead, even under the Affordable Care Act, it’s become a competition for individuals, like so much else in our modern lives, in the marketplace of virality.
Image courtesy of Esquire.
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