The Lever - LEVER WEEKLY: Murder By Spreadsheet

This is Lever Weekly, a recap of our work from the past week. If you only read one email from us all week, this should be it.

👇 The following is an excerpt of a paid subscriber-only column from David Sirota on how our democracy crisis led to our health care debacle, and below that is a recap of our other work from the week. To access the full column as well as an exclusive podcast version of the essay, upgrade to a paid subscription today.

Murder By Spreadsheet

By David Sirota

In 1962, President John F. Kennedy said, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” 

It was a recognition of a universal truth in human history: Social stability, the rule of law, and civilization will eventually break down if a population is immiserated for too long while a handful of elites profit. And just two months after that speech, Kennedy honed in on the health care crisis in America, pressing for the passage of what would become Medicare. 

“What we are now talking about doing, most of the countries of Europe did years ago,” he said at a Madison Square Garden rally. “We are behind every country, pretty nearly, in Europe, in this matter of medical care for our citizens.”

I’ve been thinking a lot about that moment in history in light of the news over the past week. All of a sudden, after the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, everyone is talking about health care, even though almost nobody was talking about it during the presidential campaign. 

This is the democracy crisis staring at us in the face: The public is rightly angry at a massive public policy failure, and yet that failure is...

David Sirota’s full “Murder By Spreadsheet” essay is available below, along with a podcast version of the essay, for paid subscribers only. Upgrade now to access both.