Hydra
On the killing of a health insurance executive
The story of the hydra is itself many-headed. The ancient Greeks sang of Heracles, son of Zeus and foe of all monstrosity, slaying the beast. Yet two prominent versions of this story exist. In one, Heracles realizes he cannot defeat the hydra's infinitely-regenerating heads, calls for his squire Iolaus's assistance, and together, the two cut and cauterize until the monster is headless. Afterwards, in celebration, Heracles coats the tips of his arrows in the hydra's toxic blood. In the other version, Heracles coats his sword in the hydra's venom in the middle of the fight, cleverly using the beast's own poison to stop its ceaseless renewal. In all iterations of the tale, it is this hydra's poison that ultimately kills Heracles, tainting a robe soaked in the blood of a centaur—yet another monster believed to be slain for good.
Millennia later, Audre Lorde argued that the master's house will never be dismantled with the master's tools.
History calls to itself, and echoes: if we are to destroy a many-headed monster, we must be careful to not empower it with our violence. Even the waste of death can have hidden consequences.
Yet Hercules—the name, the legend, the exemplar of strength—is still a hero.
On the morning of December 4th, on a sidewalk in the most populous city in America, the CEO of the country’s largest health insurance company, itself a subsidiary of the world's ninth-largest company by revenue, was killed by a masked person with a silenced pistol.
The company the dead man managed and represented, UnitedHealthcare, last year made thirty-two billion dollars in profit.
Four words were written on the shell casings of the bullets used to kill the health insurance executive: DELAY. DENY. DEFEND. DEPOSE.
The first three words are used as the title of a book, written by a lawyer and professor, explaining how insurance companies regularly defraud customers and deny claims in order to increase their profits.
The fourth word—depose—is what the bullets did.
This message is as legible as a political statement can be. It is clear, stark, and powerful. It revives for me our ancient fear of the written word.
The cruelty and fraudulence of health insurance companies is well-documented. Health insurance companies profit from lying, stealing, and denying people care. Health insurance companies profit from driving people into permanent debt, debt which often causes them—children of mothers, all—to suffer so greatly that they kill themselves. The evidence of the viciousness of health insurance companies is tangible, immense, and immutable.
I take a medicine called infliximab. Seven hundred milligrams are infused into my blood every eight weeks. This medicine helps my body not destroy its own gastrointestinal tract. It works, and I am happy for its existence.
Persuading insurance companies to pay for this medication has been my life's most constant source of fear, anxiety, dread, and anger. Infliximab is expensive. Insurance companies would rather not pay for it, but I would rather not die broke. Hence the conflict.
I have spoken publicly about fantasizing about the deaths of health insurance executives. (As a writer, I am committed to the truth, no matter its shape.)
I have spoken publicly about loathing a culture which inspires such fantasies.
In a good world, the pinnacle of political expression would not be murder. This should be obvious.
Dreams of the powerful: to have all one's commands executed with perfect compliance and precision, by completely obedient servants, and to be totally insulated from the harm created by one's desires being met.
What is power if not the ability to sever for oneself the natural link between action and consequence—between want and pain?
I admire anyone willing to risk their life to restore this link. I admire anyone willing to suffer and die in order to confront power.
I live with a disease, and because of that fact, my country has deemed me subservient to the policies of health insurance companies. For example: my wife and I have spoken often and seriously about getting divorced so that I could reduce my income below my state's poverty line so as to qualify for its Medicaid program in order to more predictably and regularly be provided the medicine that keeps me alive.
When Republican politicians were vigorously attempting to repeal or sabotage the Affordable Care Act, I watched disabled people protesting this evil get pulled out of their wheelchairs and handcuffed by police officers. Those cops then dragged those disabled people down the hallways of Congress, their dysfunctional legs trailing behind them, their screams desperate and ragged in protest, their faces defined by the terror of being even more exposed to the power and caprice of health insurance companies.
I am not, nor will I ever be, patriotic.
I am primed by the loveless dogmas which structure civilization to enjoy the death of rich people who arbitrarily control my life.
I feel in my body a particular exhaustion. It is tiredness borne of contributing to a culture that celebrates murder and cruelty in all their faces and forms. A culture which fetishizes the production, use, and hoarding of weapons. A culture in which money, our profaned water, flows uphill. A culture in which most political problems are framed as a conflict between good and evil, right and wrong, or two relative directions. Despite the beautiful and important creations of our artists, and despite a subset of the life-affirming discoveries and practices of our scientists and technicians, ours is a stupid culture remade daily by dumb people craving idiotic shit. We infantilize ourselves. We define ourselves and others using the despicable language of advertisers; we are fans of brands, not people with principles. We are a country constituted by many millions who have been tricked twice into giving a conman with fascist pretensions one of the most powerful political positions in human history. Ours is a nation that let a rich man who got famous for firing people control thousands of nuclear bombs.
I want to sleep in a cave for a thousand years.
Despite all of this, I know that most people are fundamentally good. I know that nearly every human being on Earth chooses collaboration and peace more often than alienation and violence. I know that this is the correct choice, and often it is the easier one.
We can and must better this world together—today, here, now. We are capable of this work, this care.
In a good world, one needn't cheer death. But in hell, some deaths are better than others.
The hero, in many myths, is one who defends the order in which regular people can live. Common are the heroes who fight monsters—those with swords and servants who die in the poison of constant war.
Rare are those who shelter the powerless, who risk their histories for love, who accept violence done to them so that others may live in peace.
Damn, Ken. This is perfect.
I want to sleep in a cave for a thousand years.
Felt that one.