Fly the Spinnaker
By Kimberly J. Soenen | July 3, 2026
(“Champosa.” Millennium 600 Race, Lake Michigan, 2000. Photo by Kimberly J. Soenen)
During a sailing race, ever crew member is responsible for the speed and smooth sailing of the vessel. The crew is also responsible for the health and safety of one another while on the water. When the sails are luffing, or the boat is in irons, a skillful foredeck hand will call out a forthcoming sudden shift in the wind, and the crew will scramble in a choreographed manner to raise the spinnaker—often called “the kite” or “the chute”—to harness that energy.
It is quite remarkable that the boat can go from luffing, to what feels like flying, in just a matter of minutes. Few sounds are more magical than hearing a spinnaker sail fill with wind, and few sensations are more uplifting to the heart, soul and body than feeling the instant boost and speed the spinnaker provides.
A racing boat, when pushed to its speed and stress capacity, begins to vibrate and make very loud noises. The rigging, wood and sails are being pushed to their glorious limits. When the boat sings in that way, all hands are required on deck. The technical term for this singing is called vortex shedding. The boat, quite literally, is asking for help so she can reach her potential.
We are all in this together, she is saying.
The wind is now kicking in the United States, and it’s time for Americans to fly the chute and move forward with modernized, comprehensive healthcare access policy. First and foremost, the United States is not experiencing an “affordability crisis,” or “healthcare crisis,” it is suffering through a self-imposed 45 year-long virtue-less epidemic of greed.
Let’s reframe and rethink.
When persons blame one political party for the “affordability crisis” or “healthcare crisis” in the United States, it is a false premise. In fact, since 1980, in the context of healthcare policy, members of all political parties have been responsible drafting legislation that both defends and rationalizes the Denial of Care Harm-for-Profit model of healthcare. Every member of Congress has been responsible for allowing the haste, speed and greed of the commercial health insurance investment bank industry, corporate hospitals and private equity to snowball into the lawless and lethal force it has become. The lack of moral courage and virtue by members of both parties—these are our fellow citizens, by the way—since 1980 has put us into the death spiral and deadly spin Wendell Potter and Dr. Davidson mention during this week’s episode of the Paging America podcast.
Since, May of 1996, Republicans, Democrats and Independents on the hill have all enabled the Denial of Care Harm-for-Profit business model, the rise of private equity, and the lack of regulation on corporate hospital chain mergers and acquisitions. (Lina Khan, while in office, did do her best to reject the status quo.) But at the end of the day, despite all the blame game rhetoric, the Denial of Care Harm-for-Profit business model is a choice, a uniquely American choice.
It goes without saying the Party of Trump has decimated health, healthcare and public health infrastructure in countless ways since 2017—but in fairness, the party’s members did publish their intentions very clearly in April 2024 in the regressive policy playbook called Project 2025 and many Americans have naively chosen to ignore it.
To historically frame the absurdity of this tiresome political football blame game, Dr. Linda Peeno first testified about the Denial of Care Harm-for-Profit business model on May 30, 1996 about 16 years after Managed Care hit its unchecked greedy stride. Since Dr. Peeno bravely blew the whistle on that day, warning Americans of the mass preventable harm and death that was to come, the debate has been the same: It’s their fault. After her first hearing in May of 1996, she testified two more times in front of the U.S. Congress. Denial of Care Harm-for-Profit not only continued after 1996, but it accelerated in velocity and scope and scale.
However, it does not require senior investigative journalism skills to research countless glaring financial conflicts of interests select lawmakers, healthcare policy authors, public health academics, consultants, contractors, candidates and medical professionals have with corporate healthcare. These financial ties incentivize persons to only discuss reintroducing already-failed incremental healthcare policy proposals to solve the “affordability crisis” without proposing Single Payer Universal Healthcare as a viable solution. Sadly, this quid pro quo is neither veiled, subtle or nuanced in modern day. It’s open season for The Grift and The Take.
Secondly, the ACA is imploding. Americans are dropping their plans and commercial health insurance investment banks are dropping the ACA. Despite Obama made best effort to hold the line with the non-comprehensive and clunky ACA, but he knew it was only a legislative checkmate. He knew it was the only bold, incremental, step he could take toward achieving Single Payer Universal Healthcare.
Congresswoman Lauren Underwood’s efforts in 2025 to extend the ACA tax credits were admirable, but predictably futile. When Obama was a, Illinois state senator, he very publicly expressed his core ambition to pass National Improved Medicare for All. At that time, the Single Payer Universal Healthcare bill was named HR 676 under the cosponsorship of the late Detroit Congressman John Conyers. Now, the bill is called Senate Bill 1506 / HR 3069. Obama wanted elected reps and physician advocacy groups to take the baton and run with it when the ACA imploded on January 1st—and we did know it would eventually implode because healthcare is not yet a human right in the United States of America.
Today, everyone seems to be responsible for the healthcare policy “deadly spin” and “death spiral,” yet nobody is accountable. Health policy authors, public health academics, physicians, citizens who comprise the salad of “healthcare” advocacy groups and commercial health insurance investment bank executive refugees can continue to cry foul and blame them, but the questions of marrow are: Should generating individual and corporate wealth from deliberately untreated illness, injury, disability and preventable death be legal? And, who is complicit in perpetuating Denial of Care Harm-for-Profit day-to-day?
Now, millions of Americans are hurting as the stale blame game continues and Democratic Party members and candidates are failing to clutch that all-important baton from Obama’s extremely visionary team and run it across the line. This is a turnkey moment in United States history, when the Democratic party should be strategically gibing and flying the chute to harness the nationwide big tent energy in support of Single Payer Universal Healthcare.
Instead, the party is luffing in irons.
To both salvage and modernize this lead-belly beacon, the unrelenting healthcare policy political football, blame game, recycled rhetoric, stale talking points and glaring conflicts of interest in the halls and board rooms of power must be stopped.
As Americans near the midterm elections and recognize the 250th year of this adolescent, bloody, aspirational democratic experiment, the boat is heeling heavily, the sails are on the verge of tearing, and we are rail down.
The winds have shifted. The boat is humming: “All moral and virtuous hands on deck now.”
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
This week on “Paging America,” host Dr. Rob Davidson is joined by family physician Dr. Chelsea Daniels, a co-host of the newly-launched podcast called The Situation Womb. He also talks with Wendell Potter about the re-emergence of ACA-banned “junk” commercial health insurance investment bank plans. | Paging America Podcast
When Corporations Practice Medicine By Linda Peeno M.D. | Edited by Kimberly J. Soenen | The Fine Print Magazine
Burden of Oath | By Dr. Linda Peeno M.D. | Creative Nonfiction
My Country is Killing Me | By Kimberly J. Soenen | The Fine Print Magazine
Denied: The Crisis of America’s Uninsured | By Ed Kashi and Julie Winokur - Talking Eyes Media
Bleeding the Patient | By Dr. David Himmelstein
Denial of Care Harm-for-Profit | Select directors
Damaged Care | Feature film