Fictional Yet Feasible

I am building a poster series to challenge ideas about healthcare in the US. I have modelled the money math for a preventative healthcare mutual. It is currently a fictional but feasible preventative health mutual concept. Because anyone can create a concept of a plan to compare to the current complicated layers in the US Healthcare system.
A health mutual is not a new idea. In fact, most countries with governments that offer healthcare to their populations run a mandatory participation, not-for-profit health mutual using a portion of their tax dollars to do so. Most countries do not apply puritanical capitalism to extract as much profit as they can from their citizenry via a healthcare system. Most countries don’t actively build weaponry for the worlds wars anymore. The land of the free and home of the brave has propagandized its population out of understanding the benefits of not-for-profit healthcare. Because it gives powerful people the opportunity to keep extracting.
I am very aware of how Americans discuss their healthcare versus a “socialized” healthcare system. I grew up outside of Chicago and have spent my entire adult life living in Canada and Denmark. I have experienced symptoms of chronic illness thanks to autoimmune disease since I was less than 10 years old. So in each country, I have become too familiar with using the healthcare system and what everyone thinks about each healthcare system. The messaging in the US about public healthcare cannot gaslight me into thinking the US system is better. I know the truth from experience. Experience from the two societies used to fear monger within American media the most. I know the differences from experience so tell me whatever you want, it will run up against the wall of my own personal perspective informed by experience.
The level of stress that living in the US healthcare system produces, because it is not preventative health care, is like a suffocating blanket that I got to throw off once I could access publicly funded healthcare. The stress is relieved not just because I know I won’t have to spend a second of my life arguing with insurance companies like my mom spent hours and hours doing while I was growing up, but also because the healthcare service providers are much more oriented toward preventative healthcare. Not-for-profit health coverage can be created in the land of the free. The freedom to assemble any group of people, organize for any legal purpose, and collect resources on behalf of that purpose is protected. While it would take about 10% of the US population to participate in a not-for-profit health mutual that could guarantee the kind of cost-free, full health coverage that Canadians or Danish people enjoy, frankly, if 10% of the US population did unite to become a not-for-profit health mutual, they could negotiate much better healthcare coverage than anyone in a socialized healthcare program provided by the government has ever had in the USA. Ten percent of the US population is 30 million people, an impossible-goal number. On a much smaller scale, I have modelled 50,000–100,000 people organizing to cover predictable healthcare costs within a community of people who choose creativity in the face of adversity.
Preventative healthcare is the part of healthcare that is not servicing emergency, surgical, or deadly health issues. Preventative healthcare looks at the common causes of human death to understand what health services are best to invest in. It puts resources into services that look for signs of disease before they become catastrophic health problems. It also honors the power of reconnecting with traditional, community rooted practices like those I shared in my story about tibicos healing colonization, reminding us that true wellness grows from mutual care and respect for both our bodies and histories. Preventative healthcare supports services that maintain human body homeostasis and honor the value of human life.
I started this art project to bring awareness to the ideas that I know US residents and their sympathisers have been taught about government funded healthcare systems versus the actual experience with government funded healthcare systems.
So many people are going to be pushed out of affording their healthcare insurance this year that I wanted to acknowledge this catastrophe with an art project. A creative idea that simply needs a community to believe in it to grow larger than an idea. That is the beauty behind the first amendment protections in the USA Constitution Bill of Rights. Freedom of expression creates a smoother pathway to freedom of creative movement.
I cannot join the physical protests in the US, but I can still organize and create. I truly hope to create a community of USA residents that are interested in organizing together to form a preventative healthcare mutual.

In the concept I have created and modelled into feasibility, there are two tiers of membership. The Standard 33 level offers basic preventative healthcare services for a 33 dollar a month fee. After a member demonstrates their commitment to the healthcare mutual by making 24 on-time monthly payments at the Standard 33 level, they become eligible for the Special 111 level. In the model, members opting into the Special 111 level pay 111 dollars a month, which continues the Standard 33 level of coverage and adds partial coverage for visits to approved specialists.

This art project is my invitation to imagine healthcare differently. Healthcare should not be treated as a commodity designed to extract profit, but as a shared resource built on mutual care and prevention. While this preventative health mutual is currently a fictional but feasible concept, it demonstrates that organizing together, even on a smaller scale, can create real alternatives to the broken, profit-driven system. With just a dedicated community of 100,000 or more people, it is possible to build a health mutual that covers predictable healthcare costs and focuses on preventing or discovering disease before it becomes a catastrophic health crisis. This model offers hope that the “land of the free” can also be the land of shared health and freedom from the stress and barriers created by for-profit insurance. I invite you to join this conversation and consider what it would mean for US citizens to join the rest of the developed world and reclaim healthcare as a mutual responsibility. Modify the current system so that it creates a society where care is accessible not because of profit margins, but because of shared humanity.