October — When Government Failure Becomes Policy

The Shutdown That Told the Truth

October was the month the government shut down.

Not metaphorically. Not rhetorically. Literally.

And in doing so, it failed the people it was elected to serve.

Shutdowns are supposed to be a last resort — an emergency brake when negotiation collapses. What we saw instead was the opposite: shutdowns used as leverage, as theater, as a way to force stalemate rather than resolve it. Each side dug in, not to fix a problem, but to make the other blink.

The result wasn’t leadership. It was abdication.

Fighting About Healthcare Without Fixing Healthcare

On the surface, the fight was framed as fiscal responsibility and healthcare reform. In reality, neither side was trying to fix healthcare.

By spring and summer, we had already examined the system closely. The waste wasn’t theoretical — it was measurable.

• Insured patients charged $300 for medications or equipment that cost insurers $100
• Uninsured patients billed $12,000 for procedures insurers negotiated down to $3,000
• Middlemen extracting value without adding care, accountability, or outcomes

This isn’t capitalism working through competition. It’s price inflation protected by complexity.

Real competition is hard. It requires better service, clearer pricing, and people switching providers. Raising prices is easy — especially when the system is opaque and the customer has no choice.

Healthcare has drifted far from market dynamics and even farther from patient-centered care. Yet the political fight wasn’t about fixing that distortion.

It was about who would pay for it.

The Real Question No One Wanted to Ask

When the government shut down, the question wasn’t “How do we repair a broken healthcare system?”
It was “Who absorbs the cost of keeping it broken?”

Both sides argued past the root cause. They debated funding mechanisms without challenging the inflation. They defended structures that reward profit growth rather than health outcomes.

And as always, the answer landed in the same place.

The middle class.

The people who already pay taxes.
The people whose insurance premiums quietly rise.
The people who absorb higher hospital costs, higher employer contributions, and reduced coverage — all without transparency or consent.

The shutdown exposed something uncomfortable: neither party was willing to confront the system that buys them influence. Healthcare corporations don’t just participate in policy discussions — they fund access to them.

So the debate stays safely contained. Not about reform, but about redistribution of cost.

When You Look Past the Theater

Stripped of slogans and blame, the October shutdown wasn’t about fiscal discipline or moral disagreement.

It was about maintaining an inflated system and deciding who would finance it.

That’s why it felt hollow. That’s why it didn’t age well. And that’s why, when you looked past the political theater, it wasn’t a good look for anyone involved.

October clarified something we could no longer ignore:

Our government wasn’t failing because solutions don’t exist.
It was failing because fixing the problem would require confronting who profits from it.

And no one wanted to do that.