"We deserve a world where health isn’t rationed, care isn’t contingent, survival isn’t means-tested & life is not valued statistically—We deserve infrastructures built around life, not abandonment—We won’t get there by politely debating actuarial projections."

"Your illness is not a business opportunity. Your pain not a profit margin. The healthcare system is a machine of organized abandonment—an engine of extraction dressed as care. We will not fix it with more “choice.”

"Illness is a site of class struggle because it exposes the lie of meritocracy. We show that survival isn’t earned—it’s organized, or it doesn’t happen at all".

"Every ‘anti-fraud’ measure in benefits programs costs more to enforce than it saves. But it’s not about savings. It’s about perpetuating the free rider myth, making poverty punitive and using disability and chronic illness as labor discipline".

Adler-Bolton

Healthcare as Class Warfare: Anger Backed by Evidence

1. Health Rationing Is Real—And Deadly

• In the UK, people in the most deprived areas are nearly twice as likely to be hospitalized for infectious diseases than those in affluent zones—costing the NHS up to £1.5 billion annually in avoidable admissions. Black Africans face hospital admission rates for tuberculosis up to 15 times higher than White Britons.The GuardianFinancial TimesGOV.UK

• Between 2006–2015, funding cuts in England and Wales coincided with 30,000 excess deaths—a grim symptom of a system rationed by austerity, not need.World Socialist Web Site

• Imagined “efficiencies”? More like existential cost-cutting: between 2014–2019, life expectancy stalled or fell for women in the UK’s poorest areas while it rose for the better off.Hansard

2. Inequality Isn’t Abstract—it Kills

• In the USA, the gap in life expectancy between the richest and poorest is 10–15 years—a chasm carved by class and wrapped in our healthcare system.ScienceDirect

• The famous Whitehall Study in Britain found that men in the lowest civil servant grade had three times the mortality rate of those in the highest—a ratio that persisted even when controlling for lifestyle factors.Wikipedia

• Globally, 71% of under-five deaths occur in the poorest 20% of the population. In the UK, people in deprived areas can expect to spend nearly 20 fewer years in good health compared to the wealthiest.Worldmetrics

• When inequality falls—the UK could save over £100 billion a year on health and incarceration alone. That’s not a cost—it’s a windfall.The Guardian

3. Illness as Class Witness—Not Merit Badge

• If you manage to fill a prescription in the U.S., you’re doing something most can’t: nearly 1 in 5 adults skip needed meds because they can’t afford them—even after the ACA.ScienceDirect

• Dental decay has become class warfare: among U.S. children aged 5–17, 19.4% of poor kids have untreated caries versus only 4.5% of high-income kids.NCBI

• Meanwhile, the U.S. blows $4.3 trillion on healthcare every year—about $12,900 per person—yet health outcomes lag behind cheaper, more equitable systems.TIMEWikipediaVox

4. Anti-Fraud Measures: A Witch-Hunt That Costs More Than It Saves

• In the UK’s welfare system, public fear of fraud is ludicrously inflated: the public thinks 27% of benefits are fraudulent, when actual figures hover near 0.7%.Wikipedia

• Efforts to “stamp it out” are shockingly expensive. In 2006–07, the DWP spent £154 million to investigate fraud, but only recovered £22 million.Wikipedia+1

• COVID-era “emergency measures” were exploited, costing over £8 billion a year in fraud and error. The DWP's counter-fraud campaign sharply claims to have prevented £18 billion in losses in 2022–23—but think how much could've gone into housing, schools, or actual care.GOV.UK+1

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Where Rage Meets Data—and Why It Matters

You already knew healthcare is rationed by income, not need. Now you’ve got numbers to throw at policy wonks before they pull their knockout punch with actuarial zebras. The poor die earlier, the sick are told to wait or fail, and we’re shamed for seeking survival as if it were an extravagant treat. Meanwhile, fraud hysteria haunts the vulnerable while real resources slip through their fingers.