Hugo Chávez's (President of Venezuela) move was impressive. Few things about politics impress me. As a political scientist, I see politics as little more than trying to manipulate public opinion, votes, or attitudes to back the stands on issues or legislative goals you wish to make dominant in a society. It is by its very nature, manipulative and attempts coercion to make people see things how you wish them to see them, or frame the debate so your opinion gains ground in other people's minds, and your opponents are unable to stop that from occurring. Subtlety is rare, and effectively turning the tables so your opponent is helpless to criticize your actions is also rare, and that is what impresses me, because it often must take a backseat to crude brute manipulation by flooding the media with your own supporters opinions. Some things rise above that level briefly, and Chávez succeeded in doing so, if only for a moment.

            The last thing to impress me as much was Bush's own achievements in Ohio in 2004. That was subtle, impressive, and devastatingly effective. On the morning of the election, having everyone in Ohio waking up to the dominant headlines in the news that Republican Party officials had just been given the power to stop anyone while voting, and demand that they produce an ID for them to take down their names and addresses to give to the police to have the police be able visit them in their homes after voting and start an investigation against them on the grounds of suspicion of possible voter fraud. This was not a power given to unpartisan supposedly neutral election workers, nor against people who had not already been certified as legally able to vote, but simply the dominant party in the state being able to screen people in districts where they thought they might not do well and give the names of "suspicious voters", ones likely to vote against them, to the police who would supposedly be then compelled to investigate them for potential felony crimes, all simply because they chose to attempt to vote that day instead of staying away. 

           There was little doubt who would be targeted by Bush's Republicans to be "challenged", and which parties potential voters would face possible criminal investigations. Had this occurred in any other country, world opinion would have been an immediate and overwhelming condemnation of voter intimidation, but this was in one of the few countries in the world where the rest of the world's opinion would not make a rat's ass worth of difference. The timing gave no chance for any investigation of how this might affect the outcome of a close election such as it turned out to be, and maximized public awareness of the fact of the potential risk of having a criminal investigation launched on anyone simply because of which district lived in or if they might "look suspicious" (read poor or Black) for voting, exactly on the day of voting. Whether or not such "challenges" to voters by the Republican party actually occurred or not, whether it was voter intimidation or harassment or not, it did not matter so much as Bush's potential opponent voters believing that is what they might face if they tried to vote in a predominantly Democratic district. Ohio was as important as Florida for determining the outcome election, potentially by a few thousand voters either way, and this move was far more subtle than simply disqualifying en mass thousands registered voters, and as impossible to prove as fraudulent as unverifiable electronic voting machines could be. It was even relatively inexpensive using the courts. I was quite impressed.

           So what could Chávez do that could similarly impress me, and what drew my attention to it? Having been given an assignment about current Latin American Anti-Globalization political movements, and curious about Pat Robertson's (one the most visible and well-known American religious leaders) recent call for US government agents to assassinate him, it made me curious what a leader of a small semi-obscure country could do to so much get under Conservative Americas' skin so much to have the American equivalent of an Ayatollah Khomeini issuing an rhetorical fatwa, or death mark saying others should kill him. And I was not disappointed by what I found. It was a new classic.

            Before offering cheap gasoline to poor people disaffected by hurricane Katrina, a cheap and tacky after-echo of the previously brilliant move to disrupt Bush's political landscape and give him a headache, Chávez did what few would have thought to do, and whoever thought it up deserves to be complimented on its masterstroke of simple political elegance. He offered free medical care to any poor American at any Venezuelan consulate in need of certain operations which they could not get because their own government/country denied them the right to necessary medical care.

            It was brilliant because Health Care and unequal access to it is the Achilles' heel of Conservative politics, and one could say, the very idea that money should always be able to buy oneself privileges over others. That is the core feature of Anglo-American economics, that money always should be able to get one what is scarce or valuable over others who want the same thing. This is undermined by the Health Care industry where people have a need to think sometimes, on occasions anyway, that everyone should be treated the same in some matters, no matter how rich or poor they are, dependent upon their need for care at the time.

           Even in America, bastion of right-wing Neo-conservative everything-to-the-
highest-bidder capitalism, that such simple economic principles should always and solely define life-and-death medical care decisions has still yet to be popularly embraced. That after a major loss of life, people should be divided up in descending order of their bank account balances as to who should get medical care first. That transplant organs should be auctioned off to those who can afford to pay the most for them. These things still go, temporarily, against the grain of public opinion, yet are not atypical of the very nature of the American Health Care System. Such values to a great degree are the unspoken every day reality, and the nature of the system which everyone has simply agreed by common consensus not to look at, nor talk about, nor think about. And yet a Left-wing leader of a little country dared to try to put that into public debate by drawing attention to the fact that thousands of people in the richest country on the planet go without necessary operations simply because of the nature of the system, whereas in his much poorer country, there are enough doctors and medical services to spare to donate to these neglected poor in a far wealthier country which denies them any treatment at all simply because the nature of the system is to deny care to those who cannot pay, while doctors can sit idle unable to help them, often with fatal consequences.

           While emergency personnel are not allowed to deny and ration care after an accident to who is most likely able to pay the most over who is most likely to survive or needs care the most, hospitals are allowed to do so. American television programs, both fictional and real, have shown real live people as well as fictional characters dying in ambulances while being shuffled from one hospital to another after an accident or after a life threatening injury simply because the person in need of care did not have insurance enough to be admitted even though doctors were available to help them there, yet still having to leave to try to find help elsewhere.

           Though in America, unlike some countries, it has always been illegal to participate in the for-profit meat market of buying and selling organs from living donors of poorer countries, a commodity exchange often in actuality which can end up sacrificing a poorer person's life via organs for the benefit of a richer one's, the system for apportionment of organ donation in the US from corpses is not without an economic slant. Though one is not supposed to be able to buy oneself a better place on the list ahead of others, a fact many wealthy people cannot understand the logic of and complain against, the rules for who qualifies to be even included on the list have economic components which can exclude many but the richest in society from making it onto the list in the first place.

           While I was in Hawaii, famous music artists Willie Nelson and Kris Kristopherson held a benefit concert for a local young girl who would have died without a required operation. And she was not eligible for that operation, not because of a lack of proper insurance coverage, a lacking which puts tens of millions of lives of ordinary Americans at risk every day, but because her parents were not wealthy enough for her to be on the transplant list. This would have, without the fortunate luck of a music star-powered charity benefit in her honor, meant a certain death sentence for her, as it does for ordinary American children in her place not so fortunate as to have famous music stars willing to hold a benefit concert solely for them to save that specific given child from an otherwise certain death by bureaucracy and economics. Through the concert and donations from others, enough money was raised to meet the strict standards for being included on the list, having over a hundred thousand dollars on hand in this instance to show that she could afford potentially expensive post-operative care if needed. That economic decision based on the financial health of her parents not being wealthy, requiring them to prove they had access to a huge sum of money most Americans could not have shown, was as much a factor as her own health before even allowing her to be considered for care, despite being one of the lucky few whose medical insurance would have paid for such an expensive operation without a problem.

           These are the facts of how the American system of medicine is arranged, and many other stories also show how profit is the basis of decisions that affect, not only what services are offered, but also how to maximize the profit from the services which are offered to generate the highest revenues. One hand, people can be told how the quality of their medical services are the highest in the world, while conveniently leaving out that that is because they are freed from having to deal with many of the problems other countries have to deal with, how to give adequate medical care to ALL of their citizens, and also needing to figure how to pay for it as well. That is something all other of the major industrialized countries currently provide, yet that right is slowly being eaten away as another factor which makes countries economies uncompetitive with countries which do not have such burdens. In poorer countries, it is common to simply refuse all treatment to anyone who cannot pay in advance in cash, and such economic policies are beneficial to the bottom line of these countries who choose to abdicate any responsibility for the health of their poorest citizens. Without being a requirement, it is eventually seen as a luxury which even rich countries like the US can say with a straight face, they cannot afford to pay for and remain economically competitive, and to maximize prices in an unregulated private industry based upon solely on profit, restricting the access to the wealthier few. Higher in quality and fewer in quantity. The Ferrari approach. And such arguments are slowly beginning predominate all over the globe, crowding out and replacing the debate about responsibility toward their own citizens in other countries which previously thought differently about human rights, as medical treatment as being a human right, because the contrary approach is the more profitable position, economically and competitively, for a country to take, and people convinced that their societies simply cannot afford to provide medical care for all others, as much as they might like to.

           Attempts which the media cannot always ignore (yet only briefly will mention) like Chávez's grandstanding by offering free medical care to neglected Americans, to try shine the spotlight of public attention on this issue which is so dangerous and so provocative, almost any means to silence the debate is used because the lack of access to Health Care is the weakest link in the chain holding together the notion that those with more money deserve preferential treatment in all circumstances related to their survival, that those with more money ought to always be able to gain privileges to help them better survive than others. Survival of the richest if not the fittest, via better and more exclusive Health Care. Once that last weak link is removed, the dominant ideology is that this is the new law of nature, and is applicable in any situation as a general rule of thumb. Even supposedly "Communist" China has now accepted that health insurance be privatized and deny or ration care to those who can more afford higher priced insurance away from those who may need care the most but cannot pay as much. With this being an accepted practice unquestionable by even the largest Communist country's ideology, though China only uses Communism as an excuse for political suppression, that everyone should not have equal access to medical care if some are willing to pay more to take care away from potential others, then any voice, no matter how small saying this is wrong, needs to be silenced because it may find resonance because this still rubs people the wrong way to think life itself is apportioned always first to the highest bidders.

           I have had to wait in emergency rooms, like many have had to, and been bypassed for treatment when someone in a more life threatening situation came in and got immediate treatment while I had been waiting in pain for hours because their situation was more important, more life threatening, and their need at the time was relatively greater. We are in danger of losing that completely, and saying if we have more money, regardless of the situations others may face, we should always get priority first. Our pain is more important that their lives, or if an equally dire situation or contest, the highest bidder should always get the care first, or the best care above the poorer.

           I have also waited for a long time in a bank which had only one teller on duty and a preferred customer policy where no matter how long I had been waiting, whenever a preferred customer came in the door, and many did, their numbers would come first above all others in line. To think that that attitude is becoming prevalent in Health Care is to lose the last bastion of the hope in the idea people should be ever be treated equally. (In law, those with the most money to hire the most lawyers always tend to prevail.) Anyone who dares try to show that we are losing that last example, factor, or variable which goes against their complete all-encompassing ideological world-view of fundamental privileges for the wealthy in all matters, or that we already do not have it anymore in anything, and forces us to consider what that means to how we value life itself in regards to money in a society. Those few remaining examples challenge this outlook that wealth should always be accounted for in how we treat each other, how we value each other, and who should always be first in line, no matter what; these facts will be swept under the rug and put out of the public's mind with the greatest diligence which any attempted control of the public debate can muster. Money may not mean more than life itself, but it always wins in a head to head competition against other peoples' lives.