one of the reasons the US ruling class has been so hostile to universal healthcare is bc they've adopted the tying of healthcare to employment as a key disciplinary tool to keep the working class in line. you either join the labour market and try to climb the ladder, or you die

one of marx's most important insights was that the working class, the proletariat, is defined by its fundamental precarity: their need to sell their labour power to survive. the american ruling class is dedicated to maximizing that state of precarity by any means necessary

the heterodox economist wolfgang streeck mentions somewhere that when he was doing research at an american factory he noticed that when hiring people a key factor they looked at was their mortgage. he asked why. "that's how we know how desperate they are to keep the job"