The traditional Misery Index, coined by economist Arthur Okun in the 1960s, is a soul-less number. You sum the rate of unemployment and the rate of inflation. Presto, you know how miserable the lives of the population. The Index doesn’t point to the drivers behind those addends - the faceless forces. Nor does it say who precisely is made miserable. Even in the worst of times, some citizens thrive.
We need a new Misery Index: How miserable can one sliver of the population make another sliver?
Consider the state legislators who have passed laws to make some residents desperate. Perhaps, inspired by President Biden’s call for a national soul-searching, they should meet the people they are hurting.
Let them meet the women denied abortions. The restrictions enacted to protect fetuses would force women who have been raped, or subjected to incest, to carry that fetus to term. Or would endanger the woman with an ectopic pregnancy. Or would make a 13 year-old have a child. Let those legislators sit with those women, and girls, over coffee, in those families’ homes, not in legislative offices, see their anguish — anguish that the legislators might alleviate if only they saw the people behind the political posturing behind the draconian rules.
Consider too the families without insurance. “Cost-conscious” Medicaid rules have dropped families from the rolls. Let the legislators share a tuna casserole with those families, talk to them about the rules that are making life so hard. When Scrooge met Bob Cratchit’s family, the encounter transformed the cruel skinflint. I am not aiming for transformation, simply for legislators in those deep-red states to open up their Medicaid gates, as deep-blue states have done.
Now on to the people left clueless by the arcane language in their insurance policies. The financial wunderkinds of private health insurance have found ingenious ways to trap people. Pre-existing conditions? Restricted networks? Prior authorization? Excluded treatments? Every trap yields at least a few victims, many left destitute. You can read their tales in the Kaiser Health’s Bill of the Month. The government has tried to curb those surprises with the recent No Surprises Act but - no surprise - the industry’s lobbying wunderkinds have carved out loopholes. Let all those wunderkinds meet the people they are “immiserating,”to see how misery has shown up on a corporate spread sheet.
Add to the mix the immigrants without “documentation” who clean houses, wash dishes in restaurants, man car washes, mow lawns. They come here because their lives are intolerable at “home.” They know that our laws are strict, geared to favor some countries, some people, over others. They know that they risk death on their trek here, or deportation and/or prison once they arrive. Yet they come, hoping for a better life in the United States, or at least one for their children. And they fear that “somebody” — a border guard, a police officer, an employer — may turn them in.The rules are the rules, and you can’t legislate compassion into a system of rules. But you can instill compassion in the hearts of the rule-makers. Let those people upholding the strictures (many had forefathers who came here without the requisite documentation) meet the people they are persecuting. Let the legal ones talk to the “illegals,”see up front this new Misery Index they are behind.
Finally, Big Pharma. It has given us vaccines, antibiotics, insulin, miracle drugs for once-incurable diseases. We owe it a nation’s gratitude. I don’t begrudge it the Big Profits. The industry, though, also gave us opioids. At some point the scientists recognized the addictive dangers, yet at some point the accountants recognized the profits. Years of lawsuits ensued. The accountants should meet the victims who are still alive, meet their families, talk to their orphaned children, to judge whether the profits justified their misery.
Okun’s Misery Index absolved anybody from blame: “the system” was at fault. This new Misery Index reflects the schisms in the country. Today a swathe of us overlooks “the others” in our midst. If that swathe meets those “others,” this index can shrink.
Joan Retsinas is a sociologist who writes about health care in Providence, R.I. Email retsinas@verizon.net.
From The Progressive Populist, October 15, 2022
Blog | Current Issue | Back Issues | Essays | Links
About the Progressive Populist | How to Subscribe | How to Contact Us