In 2009, a peer-reviewed Harvard study concluded that deficiencies in the USA’s health care system kill 45,000 US citizens – the equivalent of fifteen 9/11 atrocities – every year. It is easy to show that the estimate remains very reasonable today. Canada and the UK (and even Cuba) are among numerous countries that have lower child mortality rates than the USA. The USA would have 9,700 fewer child deaths alone every year if its child mortality rate were as low as the UK’s which is not even among the ten best in the world. [1] If you say the world’s most powerful, and arguably richest, country should have the world’s lowest child mortality rate, and that hardly seems unreasonable, then the USA should have about 17,000 fewer child deaths per year. [2] Obama clearly has an incredibly strong moral and legal case for seizing emergency powers for as long as it takes to overhaul the US health care system. Not that he’d ever dream of dong it, but Obama could save tens of thousands of US lives if he would do the following

1. Abolish patent protection for prescription drugs. This would actually be a draconian “free market” measure to abolish government protected monopolies.
2. Remove protectionist measures that prevent foreign doctors from driving down the very bloated salaries of US doctors – a “free trade” measure.
3. Establish a “single-payer” system that puts private insurers out of business. This one could be assailed as left wing socialism as opposed to the right wing socialism for the rich that usually prevails in the USA.

Besides saving lives, Obama would save US citizens at least 6% of GDP in annual health care costs through these measures – a savings that is much larger than the entire US military budget – by simply bringing health care costs down to the level of other industrialized countries.  Total annual health care expenditures in the USA (public and private combined) are a whopping 17% of GDP compared to only 9.4% in the UK and 10.9% in Canada. A very small fraction of the 6% of GDP savings would cover the costs of publicly funded drug research to make up for research no longer funded – at ludicrously exorbitant rates – through patents. Taking the US drug industry at its very unreliable word, it spent $50 billion on “research” in 2012 – a mere 0.3% of GDP.

Another thing Obama would be justified in doing after declaring a national emergency would be abolishing all of the Federal Reserve’s “independence”. Poverty and unemployment do tremendous harm to public health. By making the USA’s central bank directly accountable to him, Obama could ensure that the financial sector could not sabotage the economy through destructive monetary policy. Moreover, the concept of central bank “independence” deserves as much scorn as the Divine Right of Kings. If the top CEO’s of the arms industry were made commanders-in-chief of the US military would we say that the military had been made “independent”?

Obama has recently seized emergency powers by declaring Venezuela an “extraordinary threat” to the “national security” of the USA. He actually declared a national emergency. This profoundly idiotic move provoked such a fierce backlash from Latin America that a senior Obama adviser, Ben Rhodes, was soon deployed to “play down” the “spat” as AFP put it.

Rhodes said “The wording, which got a lot of attention is completely pro-forma…The United States does not believe that Venezuela poses some threat to our national security, we frankly just have a framework for how we formulate these executive orders.”

Rhodes essentially argued that the words used in US law mean whatever the president wants them to mean. If a remotely free press existed we would, at least sometimes, see Obama’s use of the National Emergencies Act in that case described as “fraud” or “illegality”. That’s how it would be described if Obama seized emergency powers to address the USA’s very real health care crisis. In fact, it would be described as a “gross abuse of power” or simply “tyranny”. US elites would ferociously attack a president who puts saving US lives above stuffing the pockets of the rich. The USA’s money-dominated electoral system is designed to prevent candidates who might turn against plutocracy from getting anywhere near the White House. The vetting process goes much deeper than campaign donations and corporate media bias. As Noam Chomsky summed it up “There’s a filtering and weeding-out process that begins in kindergarten, and it tends to select for obedience.” I’m certain Obama, like any another elite vetted politician, would sincerely regard the use of emergency powers to save tens of thousands of US lives as I’ve proposed as insane or, at the very least, fundamentally undemocratic and indecent.

However, if Obama did go “insane” and decide to save US lives at the expense of the rich, I think he would succeed. Propaganda is a very powerful thing, but it is not omnipotent. Despite the corporate media’s best efforts to ignore and dismiss it, polls have shown that the US public supports the idea of a “single payer” health care system. It is one thing to vilify a foreign government like Venezuela’s that dares to battle entrenched elites. It is quite another to demonize a government like that at home. The cleverest propaganda will not convince tens of millions of people enjoying a massive reduction in their health care costs that they are really suffering an assault on their liberty and well-being.

If Obama made defending US citizens his highest priority it would make ending US military aggression a very serious possibility as well. Of course, states can combine murderous policies for “others” with quite progressive ones for its “own people”. Consider Sweden, a major arms exporter and US accomplice today; or Israel during its early days when it could easily win over progressives like Tommy Douglas. However, after 9/11, how could a US government that actually prioritizes the security of its own people ignore that mass killing abroad risks lethal consequences at home – especially when it is the country most widely feared around the world? Nafeez Ahmed just pointed out that US-led wars have killed four million Muslims since 1990. It seems that US savagery abroad is closely linked to far less extreme but still remarkable barbarism at home.

Why bother imagining Obama doing things he would never do and would regard with as much abhorrence as his wealthy benefactors? First, it is worthwhile envisioning clear proposals – positive demands not just defensive ones – which peoples’ movements should be pushing for much more effectively. A significant raising of the minimum wage (a demand which is already beginning to take off ), some kind of Green New Deal, and democratization of the mass media would be other hugely important proposals. Second, it is important have some vision of the kind of elected leadership the left wants, the specific demands leaders would have to show they are very firmly committed to before receiving support. In other words, no more investing vague “hope” on elite vetted candidates. Third, it must be acknowledged, though it will dismay of some anarchists, that developing effective leaders and taking power electorally are things that matter tremendously.

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[1] According to UNICEF data (which you can download here) there were 28,972 child deaths in the USA in 2013. If its child mortality rate were as low as the UK’s (4.6 deaths per 1000 live births instead of 6.9) there would only have been 19,314 child deaths in 2013 which works out to 9,657 fewer deaths. Norway’s child mortality rate is only 2.8 per thousand live births.

[2] That’s using Norway’s child mortality rate in the calculation described in note 1 because its rate is far closer to being best in the world than the UK’s.

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