Cory Doctorow’s Prescient Novella About Well being Insurance coverage and Homicide

5 years in the past, journalist and science author Cory Doctorow printed a brief story that examines the radicalization of individuals who are denied health care coverage. As The Guardian notes in a latest article, the story appears “maybe eerily comparable” to the recent shooting from UnitedHealthcare’s CEO. Whereas it seems the alleged shooter by no means learn the story, Doctorow stated, “I really feel a very powerful factor about it’s that it tells you that this isn’t a novel perception.” Doctorow continued: “that the query I had is a query different folks have had.” As an activist in favor of liberalization of copyright laws and a advocate of the Creative Commons organizationyou will need to be aware that Doctorow argues for systemic reform by collective motion relatively than violence. Right here is an extract from The Guardian’s article: In Radicalizedone in every of 4 novellas made up of a science fiction novel of the identical identify, Doctorow charts the journey of a person who joins a web-based discussion board for fathers whose companions or kids have been denied well being care protection by their insurers after his spouse is recognized with breast most cancers and denied protection for an experimental remedy. Slowly, over the course of the story, the lads of the discussion board turn out to be radicalized by their grief and start to plan – and perform – assassinations of medical insurance executives and politicians who vote towards common well being care.

Within the wake of the Dec. 4 capturing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, which sparked a wave of shock towards the American well being care system, Doctorow’s novella was cited as an advocate. When America’s Prospect journal republished the story final week, it wrote: “It’s republished with permission for causes that may turn out to be clear if you learn it.” However Doctorow would not assume he was doing one thing that nobody else within the US understood. (…)

In a single a part of the story, a person whose younger daughter died after an insurance coverage firm refused to pay for mind surgical procedure bombed the insurer’s headquarters. “This is not revenge. I haven’t got a vengeful bone in my physique. Nothing I do will carry Lisa again, so why would I need revenge? It is a public service. There’s just one extra father like me,” he shares in a video message on the discussion board. “And proper now that father is speaking to somebody at Cigna, or Humana, or BlueCross BlueShield, and the individual on the telephone is telling that father that she has just a little lady. To die. Somebody in that constructing made the choice to die. make. my little lady, and everybody else in that constructing went collectively not one in every of them is harmless, and never one in every of them is afraid.

“As a result of they have to know of their hearts,” he continues. “They, their lobbyists, the lads in Congress who enabled them. They’re dad and mom. They know. Anybody who hurts their valuable kids, they may hunt that individual down like a canine. The one fantastic factor about any of that is that nobody has performed it but, I’m now going to make a prediction, that even when I’m the primary, I’ll definitely not be the final.