The kinds of things the 1/6 insurrectionist conspirators did

The ex-president's former chief of staff has stopped cooperating with the Democratic House investigation of the 1/6 coup attempt about who was involved and what they did. Nearly all congressional Republicans refuse to talk about it. The New York Times lists some of the reasons the Democrats are citing in their contempt of Congress charge against Meadows. Emails and text messages that Meadows had turned over and the House wanted to ask him about includes the following matters:

• A Nov. 7 email that discussed an attempt to arrange with state legislators to appoint slates of pro-Trump electors instead of the Biden electors chosen by the voters. Mr. Meadows’s text messages also showed him asking members of Congress how to put Mr. Trump in contact with state legislators.

• Text messages Mr. Meadows exchanged with an unidentified senator in which he recounted Mr. Trump's view on Vice President Mike Pence’s ability to reject electors from certain states. Mr. Trump “thinks the legislators have the power, but the VP has power too,” Mr. Meadows wrote.

• A Jan. 5 email in which Mr. Meadows said the National Guard would be present at the Capitol on Jan. 6 to “protect pro Trump people.”

• Emails from Mr. Meadows to Justice Department officials on Dec. 29, Dec. 30 and Jan. 1 in which he encouraged investigations of voter fraud, including allegations already rejected by federal investigators and courts

• Text messages Mr. Meadows exchanged with members of Congress as violence engulfed the Capitol on Jan. 6 in which lawmakers encouraged him to persuade Mr. Trump to discourage the attack, as well as a text message sent to one of the president’s family members in which Mr. Meadows said he was “pushing hard” for Mr. Trump to “condemn this.”

• Text messages reflecting Mr. Meadows’s private skepticism about some of the wild public statements about allegations of widespread election fraud and compromised voting machines that were put forth by Sidney Powell, a lawyer working with Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer.

Some of those things are truly damning for people who argue the 1/6 coup attempt was no big deal and not anything to be concerned about. It was a huge, deeply concerning event. It also shows the ex-president knew full well that he was fomenting lies about the 2020 election being stolen. The mendacity of the GOP on this matter is blatant. The lies should be shocking, but the the morally rotten ex-president and morally rotted Republican Party have normalized blatant partisan mendacity. These days, most everyone either expects blatant lies or they believe Republican mendacity does not exist, but Democrats lie all the time.

The NYT also pointed out that the Democrats cited Meadows’s new book “The Chief’s Chief” as evidence that his refusal to testify to Congress was untenable. His voluntary public statements in the book and social media show his willingness to talk about these issues. The 51 page House report[1] comments: “Mr. Meadows has shown his willingness to talk about issues related to the Select Committee’s investigation across a variety of media platforms — anywhere, it seems, except to the Select Committee.” 

Whether the House contempt charge allegation will amount to anything of significance for Meadows is an open question. The Biden administration has unilaterally abandoned the rule of law for Republican political criminals. That, coupled with the glacial pace of how House Democrats are proceeding, indicates that Meadows will probably face no significant legal repercussions. Once the Dems lose the House to the Repubs after the 2022 elections, Republicans in control will drop the 1/6 investigation. They will then rewrite history and simply state that the 1/6 coup attempt as just a teapot tempest of no significance.

 

Question: It is reasonable to think the Biden administration has unilaterally abandoned the rule of law for Republican political criminals? 

Footnote: 

1. The House resolution includes this: 

An individual who fails or refuses to comply with a House subpoena may be cited for contempt of Congress. Pursuant to 2 U.S.C. § 192, the willful refusal to comply with a congressional subpoena is punishable by a fine of up to $100,000 and imprisonment for up to 1 year. .... proving criminal intent in this context is no more than showing a ‘‘deliberate’’ ‘‘refusal to answer pertinent questions’’; it does not require a showing of ‘‘moral turpitude.’’ .... A committee may vote to seek a contempt citation against a recalcitrant witness. This action is then reported to the House. If a resolution to that end is adopted by the House, the matter is referred to a U.S. Attorney, who has a duty to refer the matter to a grand jury for an indictment.

It depends… doesn’t it?

 

The human concepts of “right and wrong” are normally decided/dictated by laws, whether by

-civil/criminal laws

-biblical (holy books) laws

-ethical (innate/understood/societal) laws

-natural laws

-“school of hard knocks” (street) laws

-etc.

with each of these categories also having “degrees of severity” of right and wrong.  For example, criminally speaking, there is a difference between contemplating murder, attempting murder, and actually murdering.

But let’s take something not so dramatic; say the ethical law of lying, as in “little white lies.” Are such innocuous lies always “categorically wrong” no matter what, or can they be a “necessary wrong” but for the right reason (motive)?  Little white lies might be civilly/criminally wrong if said under oath, but not ethically wrong if said in everyday conversation.  “No, those pants don’t make you look fat.”  I once asked my husband if he ever lies to me.  He said, “Only if I have to.” 😉 So yes, like much of life, the concepts of right and wrong, legal (laws) or otherwise, can get kinda complicated.

While there are many overlapping areas from one kind of right and wrong law to another, a common theme run through all such laws; the driving force of determining what’s right from what’s wrong.  For this OP, let’s just concentrate on the ethical laws category; whether something is ethically right or wrong. 

I grant you, the ethics category is in itself a further complicated can-of-worms in that it can also, for example, be societally based, as in one society’s folkways and mores being different from another society’s.  It can be a societal ethical jungle out there. 😊 

Ethics is not so easily defined because it’s also a dynamic thing that can change/morph/bend with time and place of origin.  What’s not societally/socially ethical today may be socially ethical in some distant future society.  Therefore, ethical notions are not as eternally cut-and-dried as some of us would like to think.  (I told you it was complicated.)

With that general thinking as our limited template here, let’s think about someone "doing the wrong thing for the right reason."  How about:

-Desperate little boy steals food to stay alive.  Stealing is ethically wrong BUT survival is ethically right.

-Politician takes money from and makes false promises to a nefarious wealthy donor in order to build a community center in a poor neighborhood so the kids have somewhere to go after school.  Accepting bribery is ethically wrong, lying about your intensions is ethically wrong, BUT building a new community center is ethically right.  Kinda like Robinhood Syndrome: robbing from the rich to give to the poor.  Or, “the ends justifying the means.”

Your Task: Give examples of doing an ethically wrong thing for an ethically right reason.  Or is that not even possible, as some might believe?  Think about it.

Thanks for posting and recommending.

The Republican war on elections continue; Warnings continue to fail

Republican representative Madison Cawthorn, holding a shotgun he was asked to sign, says the Second Amendment is not for hunting or target shooting but rather for fighting tyranny. He advises the crowd to begin stockpiling ammunition for what he says is likely American-versus-American “bloodshed” over unfavorable election results. 

He repeats his claims that the American election system is “rigged” and that the 2020 election was “stolen” from Donald Trump, who, he says, is still America’s legitimate president .... He says rioters arrested in the fatal attack on Congress on Jan. 6 are “political prisoners,” and discusses plans to “try and bust them out.” He tells the crowd “we are actively working on” plans for another similar protest in Washington. “When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes your duty,” he says. -- Sept. 2021

“No one can convince me that Georgia’s a blue state.” Rep. Jody Hice (R-Ga.) is most likely going to be the GOP nominee for Georgia secretary of state, and if he wins the office he will be in charge of regulating and certifying the 2024 election. In a Sept. 28 appearance on the Real America’s Voice network, host John Fredericks asked him, “Do you think Trump won Georgia?” Hice responded, “Yeah, I mean, obviously the audit is going to show that.” He went on to say, “I don’t believe, not for one moment, that Georgia is blue, but for election irregularities and fraudulent activity.” 

“When do we get to use the guns?” At an October stop in Idaho on Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA tour, an audience member cut to the chase in a Q&A session: “When do we get to use the guns? . . . How many elections are they going to steal before we kill these people?” Kirk responded, “I’m going to denounce that,” adding, “You’re playing into all their plans.” -- Washington Post, Dec. 12, 2021

At this point, posts like this warning about danger to democracy and elections are not going to change anyone’s mind. Most Republicans firmly believe the 2020 election was stolen. They are hell bent on putting radical conspiracy theorists in control of election administration and conduct. They are going to end free and fair elections in the name of protecting free and fair elections. 

The latest news sounds pretty much like the other posts here that try to warn us that we are on the verge of losing our democracy. More warnings just won't make any difference. At this point it seems more likely than not that 2020 was the last relatively free and fair national election we will see for quite some time, maybe decades, maybe as long as America stays a single country. My guess now is that in addition to the voter disenfranchisement of gerrymandering, there is about a 65% chance that the 2022 election will be demonstrably rigged and tip races to Republicans, including by outright nullification of inconvenient elections where necessary. 

Being able to prove this assumes that in states where republicans are in control, they allow analysis of the elections and the data. They will fight it tooth and claw and the Republican Supreme Court probably will mostly or completely protect that secrecy (~75% chance) in the lawsuits filed after the 2022 elections.

Futile as it may be, another New York Times article, In Bid for Control of Elections, Trump Loyalists Face Few Obstacles, sounds the warning one more time:

A movement animated by Donald J. Trump’s 2020 election lies is turning its attention to 2022 and beyond.

ELIZABETHTOWN, Pa. — When thousands of Trump supporters gathered in Washington on Jan. 6 for the Stop the Steal rally that led to the storming of the U.S. Capitol, one of them was a pastor and substitute teacher from Elizabethtown, Pa., named Stephen Lindemuth. 

Mr. Lindemuth had traveled with a religious group from Elizabethtown to join in protesting the certification of Joseph R. Biden’s victory. In a Facebook post three days later, he complained that “Media coverage has focused solely on the negative aspect of the day’s events,” and said he had been in Washington simply “standing for the truth to be heard.”

Shortly after, he declared his candidacy for judge of elections, a local Pennsylvania office that administers polling on Election Day, in the local jurisdiction of Mount Joy Township.

Mr. Lindemuth’s victory in November in this conservative rural community is a milestone of sorts in American politics: the arrival of the first class of political activists who, galvanized by Donald J. Trump’s false claim of a stolen election in 2020, have begun seeking offices supervising the election systems that they believe robbed Mr. Trump of a second term. According to a May Reuters/Ipsos poll, more than 60 percent of Republicans now believe the 2020 election was stolen.

This belief has informed a wave of mobilization at both grass-roots and elite levels in the party with an eye to future elections. In races for state and county-level offices with direct oversight of elections, Republican candidates coming out of the Stop the Steal movement are running competitive campaigns, in which they enjoy a first-mover advantage in electoral contests that few partisans from either party thought much about before last November.

“This is a five-alarm fire,” said Jocelyn Benson, the Democratic secretary of state in Michigan, who presided over her state’s Trump-contested election in 2020 and may face a Trump-backed challenger next year. “If people in general, leaders and citizens, aren’t taking this as the most important issue of our time and acting accordingly, then we may not be able to ensure democracy prevails again in ’24.”

There's a bit of understatement in that. No one may be able to ensure that democracy prevails again in ’22. The Republican stolen election alt-reality leads people to say things like they were merely “standing for the truth to be heard” while screaming for blood at the Republican’s 1/6 coup attempt. 

One person, just one rotten person, was mostly single-handedly dragged what was left of the already rotting Republican Party into the abyss of a corrupt, incompetent American Christian fascism based on colossal lies, irrational distrust and seething bigotry and hate. 

No one who laments the loss of our democracy can say that we have not been warned. Heck, George Washington warned of exactly this thing way back in 1796.[1] Lamentations and regrets will be too little, too late.

Questions: Was all that personal commentary over the top nonsense? Was it just irrational, alt-reality partisan alarmism? Most Republicans unshakably believe that.

Footnote: 

1. Good old George wrote this in 1796 about the danger to democracy that radical political factions or parties pose:

I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the state, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party, generally.

This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.

The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty.

Fear in the Republican Party

In public comments the Washington Post has collected and printed, some Republican politicians say they keep quiet or vote to protect the ex-president out of fear for themselves or their families. The WaPo writes in an article entitled, The role of violent threats in Trump’s GOP reign, according to Republicans:

It’s a must-read, but a tough read. That’s because it describes an exceedingly ugly situation: one in which lawmakers are disregarding private principle in their votes and often doing so out of literal fear. [Rep. Peter Meijer (R-MI):]

On the House floor [on Jan. 6], moments before the vote, Meijer approached a member who appeared on the verge of a breakdown. He asked his new colleague if he was okay. The member responded that he was not; that no matter his belief in the legitimacy of the election, he could no longer vote to certify the results, because he feared for his family’s safety. “Remember, this wasn’t a hypothetical. You were casting that vote after seeing with your own two eyes what some of these people are capable of,” Meijer says. “If they’re willing to come after you inside the U.S. Capitol, what will they do when you’re at home with your kids?”

At one point, Meijer described to me the psychological forces at work in his party, the reasons so many Republicans have refused to confront the tragedy of January 6 and the nature of the ongoing threat. Some people are motivated by raw power, he said. Others have acted out of partisan spite, or ignorance, or warped perceptions of truth and lies. But the chief explanation, he said, is fear. People are afraid for their safety. They are afraid for their careers. Above all, they are afraid of fighting a losing battle in an empty foxhole.

[Rep. Anthony Gonzalez (R-Ohio)]: 

[Gonzalez] made clear that the strain had only grown worse since his impeachment vote, after which he was deluged with threats and feared for the safety of his wife and children.

Mr. Gonzalez said that quality-of-life issues had been paramount in his decision. He recounted an “eye-opening” moment this year: when he and his family were greeted at the Cleveland airport by two uniformed police officers, part of extra security precautions taken after the impeachment vote.

“That’s one of those moments where you say, ‘Is this really what I want for my family when they travel, to have my wife and kids escorted through the airport?’” he said.

[Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.):]

“If you look at the vote to impeach, for example, there were members who told me that they were afraid for their own security — afraid, in some instances, for their lives,” she told CNN in May. “And that tells you something about where we are as a country, that members of Congress aren’t able to cast votes, or feel that they can’t, because of their own security.”

Republican majority leader of the Pennsylvania state Senate, Kim Ward, was perhaps the bluntest of all:

Asked if she would have signed it [a letter urging the state’s congressional delegation to reject President Biden’s win], she indicated that the Republican base expected party leaders to back up Mr. Trump’s claims — or to face its wrath.

“If I would say to you, ‘I don’t want to do it,’” she said about signing the letter, “I’d get my house bombed tonight.”

Anonymous GOP members

A week after the Capitol riot, anonymous GOP lawmakers pointed to the threat of violence impacting both impeachment votes and decisions about whether to remain in Congress at all, according to The Hill’s Juliegrace Brufke:

“Yea — I think a lot of people are making political decisions here,” one member said when asked if threats of violence affected how members of the conference will vote. 

 

A second GOP lawmaker said they believe the threats could lead to an influx in retirement announcements, with some weighing whether remaining in Congress is worth the risk.

 “Without a doubt [it’s a factor]. Watch for a large number of members to resign early or not run again after this term,” the member said.

‘Trump’s made them think this is the Alamo’

One anonymous GOP member of Congress told Politico that those who voted against rejecting the election results in Congress were soon confronted by reality — and the threat of violence that accompanied it.

“Both parties have extremists,” the lawmaker said. “There’s a difference in our crazy people and their crazy people. Our crazy people have an excessive amount of arms. They have gun safes. They have grenades. They believe in the Second Amendment. They come here and Trump’s made them think this is the Alamo.”

The Trump allies’ own version of this

While these lawmakers have described specific instances in which lawmakers might well have voted or acted out of fear of violence, some Republican allies of Trump have also pointed in this general direction, albeit more gently. They’ve effectively argued that voting to impeach Trump would lead to more violence — suggesting it was a reason not to impeach.

During the impeachment debate, Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.) said: “I really do believe that you pushing this is going to further divide our country, further the unrest, and possibly incite more violence.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) echoed the point, saying, that supporting Trump’s impeachment “under these circumstances will do great damage to the institutions of government and could invite further violence at a time the president is calling for calm.”

Questions:

1. Did republicans who voted to protect the ex-president out of fear just delusional or misinformed because there is no reason to fear because rank and file Republicans, who are merely peaceful, respectful law-abiding citizens that would never resort to violence against sitting politicians?

2. Are the ex-president’s allies, who routinely spew vicious, intentionally divisive dark free speech, right to argue that no one should vote to impeach him because it would lead to further division, unrest and/or violence? If so, should Democratic politicians, leaders and propagandists do the same to keep their party and politicians towing the line?

Book banning and teaching revisionist history: Another front in the march of radical right authoritarianism against democracy

Burnt books in modern times

Dictators, fascists and other kinds of authoritarians like to control and suppress inconvenient information. The Republican Party is adopting this hallmark of authoritarianism that looks very much like fascism in the American context. The New York Times writes:

Texas State Representative Matt Krause, a Republican, emailed a list of 850 books to superintendents, a mix of half-century-old novels — “The Confessions of Nat Turner” by William Styron — and works by Ta-Nehisi Coates and Margaret Atwood, as well as edgy young adult books touching on sexual identity. Are these works, he asked, on your library shelves?

Mr. Krause’s motive was unclear, but the next night, at a school board meeting in San Antonio, parents accused a librarian of poisoning young minds.

Texas is afire with fierce battles over education, race and gender. What began as a debate over social studies curriculum and critical race studies — an academic theory about how systemic racism enters the pores of society — has become something broader and more profound, not least an effort to curtail and even ban books, including classics of American literature.

In June, and again in recent weeks, Texas legislators passed a law shaping how teachers approach instruction touching on race and gender. And Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican with presidential ambitions, took aim at school library shelves, directing education officials to investigate “criminal activity in our public schools involving the availability of pornography.”

“Parents are rightfully angry,” he wrote in a separate letter. They “have the right to shield their children from obscene content.”

“Education is not above the fray; it is the fray,” said Robert Pondiscio, a former teacher and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a public policy group. “It’s naïve to think otherwise.”

In Texas, such battles recur. In 2018, an education committee proposed striking a reference to “heroic” defenders of the Alamo, describing it as a “value-laden word.” A roar of resistance arose and the board of education rejected the proposal. The Republican lieutenant governor this year pressured a museum to cancel a panel to discuss a revisionist book — “Forget the Alamo” — examining its slaveholding combatants.

“One minute they’re talking critical race theory,” Ms. Damon, the librarian, said. “Suddenly I’m hearing librarians are indoctrinating students.”

Mr. Krause, who compiled the list of 850 books that might “make students feel discomfort, guilt, anguish” because of race or sex, did not respond to interview requests. Nor did his aides explain why he drew up the list, which includes a book on gay teenagers and book banning, “The Year They Burned the Books” by Nancy Garden; “Quinceañera,” a study of the Latina coming-of-age ritual by the Mexican Jewish academic Ilan Stavans; and a particularly puzzling choice, “Cynical Theories” by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay, which is deeply critical of leftist academic theorizing, including critical race theory.  

On the question of slavery, for instance, the Texas law prohibits teachers from portraying slavery and racism as “anything other than deviations from, betrayals of, or failures to live up to the authentic founding principles of the United States.” This conflicts with the views of many scholars who note that from America’s founding, slavery was woven into the structure of the nation and the Constitution.

The NYT goes on to point out that Texas law is ambiguous and vague, causing the list of bad books seems to send a chill through school boards. In the absence of clarity in state law, some librarians have been told to pre-emptively pull down books. A San Antonio school district took 400 books off the shelves for review.

 

It does seem naïve to think that the radical right will not target public education and inconvenient history and truth in Texas and everywhere else it can. Instead of critical race theory, something akin to White superiority theory will be taught. Texas law does not mention critical race theory, so there is ambiguity. The Texas radical right can play with that ambiguity as they socially re-engineer American society, government and law to fit the dominating neocapitalist and Christian nationalist ideologies that now dominate the radical right republican Party. A similarly vague law in Oklahoma has been challenged on grounds of vagueness

The Texas law states that teachers should “explore” contentious subjects such as slavery and treatment of American Indians “in a manner free from political bias.” However, it appears that the radical right has no real interest in anything other than indoctrinating students with their politically biased vision of reality and history. The right will self-righteously condemn any whiff of other points of view that do not accord with their sacred beliefs. That runs deep in Christian nationalist dogma.

Among other things, Christian nationalist ideology is rock solid in its dogmas that (i) heterosexual White men are God's chosen moral and political leaders, and (ii) America was Founded as a White Christian nation that God chose to rule over all other nations and racial groups. That literally is the history they teach in their religious schools. Christian nationalists want to force all public schools to teach the same thing as long as public schools exist.[1] 

Question: Is the radical right sincere about being unbiased in teaching, or is that just propaganda and lies? 

Footnote: 

1. Christian nationalists want all secular public schools replaced with private religious schools, and they want to force American taxpayers pay for all of it by law. That is core dogma among Christian nationalist elites and their legal strategy in the courts, not fringe crackpottery. This is no idle threat.

According to Pew research in 2020, half of Americans say the Bible should influence U.S. laws. 28% favor the Bible over the will of the people. Christian nationalists have made it clear that they do not care about majority public opposition to what they want to do. They are doing God's work and that trumps everything else including man's law, the US Constitution, public opposition, democracy and civil liberties. They are authoritarian.

Burning books about 80 years ago

Long haul COVID patients and their conditions

 The Washington Post looked at the situation for people who have long haul COVID-related symptoms such as brain fog and severe fatigue. About 750,000 to 1.3 million people are estimated to affected. Another  50 million have experienced some of these symptoms after a COVID infection to be able to return to work and a fairly normal life Research has begun to understand what causes the various symptoms and how to treat them. There is not much understanding at present about causes and treatments. One tragedy is that many of the people who are long haulers have lost their jobs first and then their health insurance, leaving them unable to afford whatever limited health care there is. Most of these people are hopelessly adrift in society. A few have fallen into poverty and homelessness.

At present, new cases of long haul are coming mostly from unvaccinated people, adding to the social and economic cost of a personal refusal to get vaccinated. The WaPo writes:

Long covid is testing not just the medical system, but also government safety nets that are not well suited to identifying and supporting people with a newly emerging chronic disease that has no established diagnostic or treatment plan. Insurers are denying coverage for some tests, the public disability system is hesitant to approve many claims, and even people with long-term disability insurance say they are struggling to get benefits.

“They are suffering in dramatic ways, and in ways that have altered their lives and placed them in financial peril,” said Harlan Krumholz, a cardiologist and scientist at Yale University and Yale New Haven Hospital.

Depression and anxiety that are part of the brutal mix of long covid symptoms are exacerbated by despair over vanishing income. 

Often referred to as “long haulers,” they experience mild symptoms to begin with, then get stuck with months of chronic fatigue, shortness of breath, confusion and memory loss, erratic and racing heartbeats, radical spikes in blood pressure, painful rashes, shooting pains and gastrointestinal problems.

The government calls it post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2, or PASC. The National Institutes of Health is spending $1.15 billion to study the syndrome. The symptoms sometimes subside, lulling long haulers into a false sense of relief, only to come roaring back after performing simple chores like vacuuming a living room or raking leaves.

Even for those who do have insurance, treating long covid can be unusually complicated and costly, since it’s a new disease without an established diagnostic or treatment plan and coverage for certain tests may be denied.

Health insurance companies, citing the blizzard of tests being ordered, say they are waiting for data-driven protocols to emerge so they can match insurance coverage with the best testing and treatment strategies for long covid.

The cognitive and emotional impacts also make it difficult for patients to navigate the bureaucratic tangles required to keep health insurance and file disability claims after a job loss.

John Buccellato, 64, an emergency medicine doctor at an urgent care clinic on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, was hospitalized with the virus in March 2020, in the same hospital where his mother died of covid.

In a matter of days, he went from treating patients at a busy clinic to being engulfed in a health crisis as covid attacked his lungs and vascular system. Severe cognitive and emotional strain left him unable to manage his day-to-day affairs.

Overwhelmed by brain fog and the sense of loss over his career, he frequently sobbed on the phone as he described his struggles in an interview, including the loss of his employer-sponsored insurance.

Buccellato said he has tens of thousands of dollars in unpaid medical bills that accumulated when he first lost his health insurance. He has some property and savings, but no weekly cash flow, he said. He signed up for COBRA, which provides a continuation of health insurance after a job loss, but after congressionally approved waivers that made it free expired in September, it now costs $922 a month, he said.

Buccellato said he recognizes his career is prematurely over, but he can’t figure out how to dig himself out of his worsening financial predicament. A lawyer helped him file a disability claim with the Social Security Administration, which a member of his support team said was recently successful. Because he left work for medical reasons, he was not eligible for unemployment insurance.  

Patients, advocates and lawyers said private disability insurers, which offer long-term disability coverage through employee benefit plans, have also been denying many claims.

The WaPo goes on to point out that patients who apply for disability insurance benefits are initially denied and require lengthy appeals, partly because the medical community is still unable to diagnose the symptoms. The Social Security Administration has received 16,000 covid-related disability claims since December 2020, but it refuses to disclose how many of those were approved. Once again, secrecy shrouds government operations for unknown reasons.

And once again, the moral compass of America's for-profit health care system is on display. Profit is the sole moral value. Human life comes in a distant 2nd or 3rd, or maybe 4th behind whatever other factor(s) drives our grossly expensive, needlessly blindingly complex, opaque health care system. As time passes and the influence of radical right conservatism clamps down harder and harder on average Americans, the situation for most people will probably continue to deteriorate. 

It will be interesting to see how this aspect of the pandemic plays out and what the social and economic cost will amount to, assuming the COVID pandemic ever ends.

Questions: 

1. Given the cost, is America's health care system (i) probably more concerned with profit than human life and/or (ii) too complex and opaque?  

2. Should COVID long haulers who had the opportunity to get vaccinated but refused always be treated just like all other patients, i.e., first come, first served? Or do they not deserve priority when it crowds out similar care to other kinds of patients because the local health care system is overloaded?