Why Is Health Insurance So Expensive?

(And is that why we are all so mad?)

Health insurance premiums are skyrocketing this year. Understanding why pulls in a multitude of topics: aging populations, expensive new drugs and treatments, rising costs across sectors, the consolidated profit layers baked into our system, and more. Sarah and Beth untangle why and how we got here, what’s actually driving costs, and why the solution is not as simple as wishing for a universal healthcare fix. Plus: why everyone seems so angry about everything.

Topics Discussed

• No Dumb Questions About Health Insurance

• Why Premiums Are Skyrocketing

• Insurance as Financial Security vs. Healthcare Solution

• Outside of Politics: Customer Service and Community

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Episode Resources

Alcohol Use in America and Around the World

• 2024 Employer Health Benefits Survey (Kaiser Family Foundation)

• How much do employers pay for health insurance? 2025 Guide (Thatch Blog)

• What Matters for Health: Insurance is Less Important Than You Think (Paragon Institute)

• What is the average employee health insurance cost per month? (Thatch Blog)

• Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green

• America’s health-care costs are shooting up (The Economist)

• Dr. Lisa on 13 year-olds (Instagram)

• CBC Gem Commercial (Instagram)

Episode Transcript

Sarah [00:00:07] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.

Beth [00:00:09] This is Beth Silvers. You’re listening to Pantsuit Politics. For at least two years, we’ve been reading that health insurance premiums would go way up for 2026, and here we are. It’s not great. It’s no great right now. So today we’re going to talk about what’s going on and how we got here. Outside of Politics, long time listener Katie sent us an Instagram reel about customer service that is so on point, we needed to talk about it. So we will do that.

Sarah [00:00:35] Before we get started, we wanted to take a second to tell you a little bit more about what you’re missing on Substack. If you haven’t yet joined us, our premium shows provide the money that lets us make this podcast free for everyone. That’s the long and short of it. It takes a lot of time, a lot people, a lot of energy, and a lot money to produce Pantsuit Politics. So your subscriptions are the foundation of our business model. There is no Pantsuit Politics without the Substack subscriptions. They are hugely valuable to us. We work hard to make them hugely valuable to you.

Beth [00:01:12] As part of that, twice a week on Mondays and Wednesdays, I make a show called More to Say. One of my favorite things about doing it is that it lets me spend time on topics that might not be bubbling up in the headlines, but are really important. So this year I have really focused on education. I did a series of focus groups a few months ago with educators on school attendance, and then I made several episodes sharing what I learned. And right now I’m doing focus groups with a ton of people, parents, students, educators, social workers, speech language pathologists, all kinds of therapists to talk about special education. So I’ve got about 80 people that I am spending time with so that I can produce a more to say series on special education next month. I’m super excited about it. And this is the kind of work again that your dollars allow us to do and that we hope provides a really great return on that investment.

Sarah [00:02:01] So we would love for you to join us for the seven short premium episodes we make every week by going to pantsuitpoliticshow.com today. We have a wonderful community there, including a very tight-knit group of executive producers that we’re delighted to welcome Janelle to this week. So, go check it out. Join us at Substack.

Beth [00:02:21] Next up, let’s talk about what’s happening in health care. Sarah, before we talk about the premiums going way, way up, we have had a bunch of direct messages and emails just asking for some basic information about how healthcare works in the United States. So we’re going to do what Maggie has entitled a little no dumb questions section to just try to fill in some of those gaps for people, beginning with what is the ACA?

Sarah [00:02:57] Yeah, we talked about ACA Societies a lot with regards to the government shutdown. So what does ACA stand for? It’s the Affordable Care Act, signed into law in 2010 during the Obama administration. Does a lot of things. It’s primarily a health insurance exchange market. This was modeled on the Massachusetts model under Mitt Romney that allows for people not under an employer sponsored plan. So that’s the majority of Americans. I looked at this ratio while we’re doing research for this episode. And it’s a little over a majority. It’s like 53% of people get their health insurance through their employer, okay? Then there are people like Beth and I, who don’t work for an employer who work for themselves or have a million other reasons, own their own business, don’t have enough employees to qualify for affordable coverage through an employer-sponsored program. So the idea behind the ACA is that let’s create a marketplace. So all the people who don’t fall in that 53%, or who don’t get Medicare and Medicaid, which we’ll get to next, have a place to go. And they will pull their risk, and we will have a marketplace, it prohibited exclusions or penalties based on preexisting conditions. So that was a big part of opening up the marketplace under the Affordable Care Act. It requires coverage of some preventative healthcare services with no out-of-pocket expenses. And another huge, huge piece of the Affordable Care Act was allowing adult children to stay on their parents’ plans up to the age of 26.

Beth [00:04:40] So in addition to employer sponsored plans and the marketplaces, we have Medicare and Medicaid and people really confuse us all the time. Look, if you watch some of the confirmation hearings this year, there are members of Congress who seem not entirely clear about the difference between Medicare and Medicaid. Medicare is the federal health insurance program for people who are 65 and older and for people with certain disabilities. That kind of goes back to the Reagan administration. There were just a couple of things that Ronald Reagan really had a heart for that he put into Medicare because he really had a heart for them. But mostly Medicare is for people when they retire. If we have a primarily employer-based system, you need something for people once they are no longer employed and that’s what Medicare exists to do.

Sarah [00:05:24] That’s about 20% of our population. Can only assume that’s going to grow as our population gets older and older. And it’s complicated. It’s not like you just get Medicare. And also if you do get confused, which I often do, you care for the elderly, you aid the poor, if that helps you at all to distinguish Medicare, which is for the elder, and Medicaid, which just for the poor. So Medicare is complicated too because most people need some sort of private insurance supplement. Medicaid Part B, you’ve probably heard that brandished around in conversations or in commercials. And so there is usually an insurance supplement that most people on Medicare have to sign up for. And that’s pretty complicated too.

Beth [00:06:10] It is complicated. Medicare Advantage plans are complicated where Congress has been experimenting with privatizing more of this. So it’s not straightforward in any respect, but that’s generally what we’re talking about with Medicare. Medicaid, as Sarah said, is a health insurance program for low income people and more people with disabilities. Eligibility for Medicaid though varies by states because even though the federal government finances some of Medicaid, the states have a very big role. So the rules are different state by state, the way it’s administered varies state by state. If you’ve heard fights about Medicaid expansion in a particular state, it’s because states got to decide under the Affordable Care Act, whether they wanted to provide Medicaid to more people. So Medicare is much more controlled by the federal government. The federal government has a role to play with Medicaid, but it really differs across the United States.

Sarah [00:07:00] And that’s about 17% of the population is on Medicaid. So you got 53% on employer-sponsored insurance, 19.1% if you’re getting specific on Medicare, 17.6% on Medicaid, and then about 10.7% in the ACA marketplace. And then you have about 8% to 9% of people that are just uninsured still. And then you have a very small percentage of military members that are in the basically a socialized healthcare system through the VA.

Beth [00:07:33] So another question that we got is how immigrants impact the cost of health care. Someone asked, and I’m glad that someone felt comfortable asking this question, are immigrants the reason that premiums are so high? And the answer is, no, they are not. So I just want to read this from Kaiser, which is a foundation that does like the research around health insurance. Non-citizen immigrants are more likely to be uninsured than citizens because they have more limited access to private coverage due to working in jobs that are less likely to provide health benefits. And then they are excluded from most of those federally funded coverage options. They have lower healthcare expenditures typically because most immigrants are younger than the average US citizen. And a lot of immigrants, especially right now, are fearful of taking advantage of the programs that are open to them. So where states have covered more people, some people don’t take advantage of that coverage because they are concerned about what filling out this paperwork might put them on the radar for. Also important to know that the 2025 tax and budget law will eliminate health coverage access for many immigrants who are here lawfully. And so this is a population that is dramatically underserved in terms of health care needs in the United States and not the driver of health insurance cost escalating. The other question we wanted to make sure that we address is someone asked just why don’t we have universal health care here? We’ve been talking about this very fragmented system where there are federal programs, there’s the state federal partnership, there’s the marketplaces, there’s employer sponsored plans. Why is it like that?

Sarah [00:09:17] A lot of historical reasons, a lot of cultural reasons around our very individualistic culture, our limited government, federalism, they did create employer-sponsored health insurance systems after World War II. And so it really got linked into this employment model. You have a lot interest groups that vehemently oppose any sort of universal healthcare. It is interesting to watch the two roads that UK and the US took post-World War II. Because the UK used that post-World War II movement to build their National Health Service. To me, the point I want to make about universal healthcare is I think that when we talk about our own healthcare industry, it is put on the table as a magic solution. And if you have spent any time in Europe or you have spent any time in conversations with Europeans or Canadians, it’s not a fix all. And there are lots of critique of the National Health Service. There is lots of critiques. I spent a dinner with two Parisians who were not pleased with their health care at all. Same with Canadians. I just think that the cost of American health care is a huge issue that other people around the world are horrified, rightfully so, by how much we spend on health care. But the idea that just getting universal health care would fix everything and that it sounds like health care paradise where there are people who live in universal health system. I don’t think that’s accurate either.

Beth [00:10:54] I think that that’s right. I also think that it is not just the case that we would need to enact a new system. It would be that we have to tear the existing system down. Legally, employer-sponsored health insurance is baked into the tax code. There are so many places where this system is sort of hardwired into the way that we do lots of things, and lots of industries where lots of people work. And so I’m not defensive of our system. I think it’s not working for a lot of reasons that we will discuss robustly, I’m sure, in the next segment. But I do want to say that it would be both a creation and a destruction at the same time to try to move to that system and I think it’s important to be honest about that. So thank you for those questions. Thank you for trusting us with questions like that, that you feel like are hard to ask elsewhere. Next up, we’re going to talk about why is this all getting so much more expensive so rapidly? We are seeing this year the steepest increase in health benefit costs in at least the last 15 years. And one huge driver of that is the expiration of subsidies around those Affordable Care Act plans. Now, remember what Sarah started with. I think those percentages are so helpful. It’s only about 10.7% of the population on those healthcare exchanges. So while that is a massive issue for those of us on those plans, and I am, it is not an everybody issue. And premiums going up dramatically is an everybody issue. Even with employer sponsored plans, those premiums are skyrocketing this year.

Sarah [00:12:37] Yeah. My health insurance costs more than my mortgage. I don’t know what else to say about that. That’s insane. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, and that’s where we’re getting a lot of these statistics and numbers from, this was in 2024, the average monthly premium is about $746 for single coverage and $2,131 for family coverage. Now, a lot people’s employers cover some of that cost. Employees usually contribute only 16% of costs for single and 25% for family coverage. That’s why ours are so expensive is because we are the employers. My husband basically owns his own business. He’s a partner in his law firm. So that’s why our is is so expensive. It’s not a huge law firm. We’re not getting all this help with the coverage. And you’re paying a lot more money. You’re playing monthly premiums and amount you have to cover out-of-pocket is huge. The deductible, the amount you have to meet before they even cover any of it is huge. And so it’s just massively expensive.

Beth [00:13:45] And the fragmented system makes it hard to capture all that. So you see a lot of headlines about the premiums going up, but you’re right. In conjunction with those premiums going up, so many people are going to get less coverage for those higher premiums because the out of pocket maximums are increasing because the deductibles are increasing. So it is a really fraught time. Why is this happening? That is for a lot of reasons too, but a lot reasons that people have seen coming. This is not a situation that fell out of nowhere that made everybody go, oh my gosh, I can’t believe this happened. You’ve been able to see over the past couple of years that our drugs are expensive. We have more of them. We are using more of them. GLP-1s, which are a whole other show, but there’s a lot you can say about them. But one thing you can is that they are expensive and a lot of people are using them. And that is driving the cost of health insurance up.

Sarah [00:14:42] Yeah, we all remember during COVID constant conversation about labor shortages. Well, that also pushes up wages as they try to hire more nurses and nursing assistants and doctors and nurse anesthetists. They make a lot of money. The wages are high depending on your specialty. Please don’t email me. And so I think that that’s a part of it, too. I report all the time on the Good News Briefs about these major breakthroughs, particularly in cancer treatment, coming breakthroughs with genetic editing. I mean, they have cured type 1 diabetes. The reason we don’t have it yet is because it’s very, very expensive. They’re going to have to figure out-- like CRISPR and all this technology that really holds such incredible promise is massively expensive. So our treatments are more expensive, the labor is more expensive. Our population is aging, which means we’re using more of all of these expensive treatments and this expensive labor.

Beth [00:15:47] And we’ve had generalized inflation. So every single thing in the supply chain for all of this is more expensive. None of this is to make anybody feel guilty about the care they’re receiving. I had a really hard time when I worked in human resources. I worked at an organization that had a self-funded plan which meant that our risk pool was the population of employees and family members on our particular plan. And we got a lot of data about that plan. And you could see where one person who receives an organ donation becomes your most expensive claimant on that plan, right? And I always really struggled with that data because I don’t want anybody to feel guilty for using health insurance. That’s what it’s there for. At the same time, I think it’s helpful to understand what’s driving these trends. So the GLP-1s are part of it. Like you said, specialty medicine, the wages required to attract people to work are part it. Cancer care has been the top driver of employer cost increases for four years in a row. We are getting better at diagnosing it. We’re getting better at treating it. We’re doing miraculous things in the medical field. It just all has a cost.

Sarah [00:16:53] Also cancer rates are going up among people in particularly of our age group. Like people are getting cancer younger. And that’s the other thing. We are getting more healthcare. People are engaging with the healthcare system. And at first they thought well this is catch up post-COVID, but now we’re five years out and it seems baked in. I was reading The Economist that by late 2024 some cancer screenings were up 60 to 80% compared to 2019. The use of prescription medications increased 14% in the same period. So people are just engaging with the health system more while also being furious at the outcomes. I mean, that’s the hard part. We’re spending more, we’re getting more healthcare, we’re not getting better outcomes. That’s the heart reality. We are not getting much better outcomes.

Beth [00:17:44] And you can see the threads of that showing up in our politics all day, every day. It is more expensive. I’m furious about it. It’s often not a great experience. I am furious about it. My outcomes are not improving. I’m furious about It. People want easy answers. They’re very complicated problems and problems that are hard to deal with. And I think we cannot miss-- you said this earlier, but I want to highlight it. We are getting older. And as we can older, we just need more healthcare. As a population, we are aging. That means that the labor force gets more expensive. That has so many ripple effects across this entire industry. And it’s an industry.

Sarah [00:18:25] That’s got to be part of it. I was reading this article about the people in their 80s still working, people in their 70s still are working. It’s also like even with the employer-based systems, people are working later in life, which means they’re going to exhibit more risk and cost inside those employer-based systems. And so one of the things I flagged for this episode a long time ago when we started talking about doing one is I think that the conservative argument is going to cut-- this was a Paragon study, this kind of conservative think tank. And their thing is basically like they’re unapologetic about cutting Medicaid or going after the ACA or the marketplace because they’re like this spending doesn’t improve outcomes. You don’t need health insurance because it might make you feel better about your expenses or financial security, but it’s not improving health outcomes. There’s not a lot of data in these observational studies between insurance rates and health outcomes. There’s correlation, but there’s not established causation.

[00:19:35] They were talking about estimates suggest it contributes no more than 10 to 20% to determining health outcomes as far as the amount of healthcare you have. I don’t say that lightly, I have a diabetic child. Obviously, I use the healthcare system to keep my child alive. Big fan. You know what I’m saying? I’m definitely in that 10 to 20% where it matters, okay? And as I’m reading this, and I know people are frustrated with the system, so I’m like, okay, well, I don’t really think that’s why people have health insurance. I don’t think anybody thinks I’ll-- maybe people do. I don’t. I don’t think of health insurance as a way to make my family healthier. That’s not how I think about it. I think it about it as insurance. So if something goes terribly wrong, we have a financial backstop. And I think that’s what the conservative argument about these misses. Yeah, some people do use it for financial security. I just don’t know if the system we’ve built to protect people’s financial security is the best solution to an expensive healthcare system. It seems to me like we’re putting a band-aid way downstream.

[00:20:41] And look, I am responsive. As much as I engage with the healthcare system, I am also-- and I love insulin that my diabetic child receives and the healthcare that kept my stepdad alive over the last two weeks, three weeks. And also, if you push me hard enough, I’m basically a Christian scientist. I had two babies at home. You know what I’m saying? I also have questions about-- because I think there’s two different questions, right? What do we want the healthcare system to do? And what do we want health insurance to do? And I don’t feel like we’re ever-- first of all, I definitely don’t think they’re working together to make us healthier. They’re working together to make a lot of money for certain industries and people, but I don’t think they’re working together to make-- well, I mean, it’s not even what I think. Our health outcomes are shit for how much money we spend. So we know that’s true. We know that for a fact. And it’s like I don’t feel like we ever piece apart what do we want health care to do and what do we want health insurance to do in a way that is productive and contributive to the goal.

Beth [00:21:53] And those have to be segmented out even more. Because they’re different answers based on different moments in life. Chronic disease management is quite different than being in a car accident and having severe injuries and going through a limited time of really intense healthcare versus a person who just needs a preventative check every year and goes on their merry way or can manage something with like a very inexpensive statin or something. Like we have all these different categories of people that were trying to serve through the same system. And I think that’s where it’s not working where our expectations are all wonky. Like you said, if some people are thinking my health insurance is going to keep me healthier, that expectation’s not being met. If I think my health assurance should financially make sense for me in a year when nothing catastrophic happens, that expectation is definitely not being meant.

[00:22:44] There are critiques of the Affordable Care Act for requiring plans to provide this minimum amount of coverage where your preventive screenings are paid for at 100%. And that is both helpful. I think that was well intended. It also, I think, contributes to our expectations being off from the reality. Because if you make an appointment for your annual physical, all preventive, and then at that appointment, ask a question about something currently bothering you, that’s going to get coded as not preventive and you’re going to get charged for it. And that charge is going to make you think, what am I even paying for my insurance for? Every time you get a bill for healthcare, it is so expensive and most of our plans now are really catastrophic coverage.

Sarah [00:23:32] Very, very expensive catastrophic coverage.

Beth [00:23:36] Yeah. Very, very extensive catastrophic coverage that is causing a lot of people in my life and in my age group, even people who use healthcare a lot to say, like, when I put pen to paper, it looks like I’d be better off depositing the amount I’m spending on health insurance in a money market account and taking my chances.

Sarah [00:23:59] Yeah. I think a lot of families are having that conversation. Does this make financial sense? I mean it’s so hard. It’s tough to argue like, damn, most people could hire a private chef for what they’re spending on health insurance every month, or a private trainer and a private chef. Shit, I don’t know. But again, health insurance is not-- it’s to protect against the motorcycle wreck or the diabetes diagnosis. I do feel differently now that I’ve had to use the health insurance for the sort of worst case scenario that presents itself. I’m reading Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green right now. And he talks about this, he describes it as like acute on chronic. An acute situation presented on top of a chronic condition. And I’m like, man, is that not like everything right now? And it definitely feels like what we’re talking about. Like we have an acute situation with health insurance on top a chronic problem.

[00:25:08] And look, I don’t even think it’s just health insurance. I think home insurance. I just paid for my roof to be replaced, and I think I’m the only schmuck in my entire neighborhood who paid for my roof to be replacing, who didn’t go through their home insurance and get it paid for. I’ve talked to five people and they’re like, oh yeah, my home insurance paid for it. And those five people are still going to complain to me when the home insurance rates go up. It’s that with natural disasters. It’s that with car insurance. It’s because I think everything is so expensive, you really get in this posture of I’m owed this. I want to break somewhere. I want to feel like everything is not extractive. And we do not make good decisions when everything is extractive because you get in this really defensive posture of like the system owes me. And you can hear it even with healthcare where people are just like-- I hear it all the time with people my parents age about Medicare. And it just like, “I’m on Medicare now and I’ll get what I can get.” And look, I’ve been that way about my disabled kid. I’ve been that way about disability passes. This is hard enough; I’m going to take what I can get. It’s like Tragedy of the Commons writ large.

Beth [00:26:20] Well, because the system is really extractive. I mean, even when you have a situation, I’m sure you experienced this with diabetes. My mom is managing multiple chronic health issues. It’s hard. She has good coverage. It’s still extremely expensive out of her pocket. It is still extremely extensive. There is not a scenario where insurance comes in and really makes you whole. It just doesn’t happen. Even when you that your house burned down in a fire and insurance pays for you to build a new one or buy a new one, a lot was lost that insurance cannot make up for, right? And that’s the problem. Insurance is always coming at us in those scenarios where it’s hard enough. And so we want this to be something that actually contributes to mitigating that loss. And instead, now it feels like it is financially ruinous instead of a financial instrument that helps us avoid ruin.

Sarah [00:27:16] It feels to me like insurance is in a transition along with the rest of all the things.

Beth [00:27:25] All things.

Sarah [00:27:27] And I do not know what comes next. I don’t know what it will look like. To me, everything is buckling under the cost. Like the pressure is such that I don’t not know how regular everyday people like me-- I can’t do this 20 to 30% increase every year. Even with a diabetic child, I can’t. They’re getting older. They get more expensive. I have to pay for car insurance. I’m assuming my children might want to go to college. Something got to give. Something has got to give.

Beth [00:28:05] Well, I was chatting with a friend who’s looking at some options right now and we were discussing this option of like what if I just don’t? And she was saying, I can get on this higher plan and pay for it and hope for the best. And the truth is, if something catastrophic happens, even with the plan, it is financially ruinous for me. Paying this out-of-pocket maximum would crush us. So we’re going to have to figure something out either way. Maybe we’re better off taking our chances and just trying to work it out directly with a hospital and a doctor instead of this system that has all these layers. I mean, that is part of what causes our prices to go up too. You also just have a lot of people within this system who either need to make money or not lose it. So you have pharmacy benefit managers, you have drug companies, you have hospitals, you have physician’s groups, many of which are owned by hospitals now. And you have all this consolidation in the industry. Again, this is not to demonize anybody or anything, but that’s a lot of profit being extracted.

Sarah [00:29:15] Well, sometimes all those people are the same company.

Beth [00:29:17] Right. And we’ve had all this consolidation.

Sarah [00:29:20] CVS. Yeah.

Beth [00:29:21] So it’s not a competitive marketplace anymore. And our insurance makes the billing incomprehensible to the average person. And so you can’t really say, this test shouldn’t cost that much. I’m not paying this much for this test, right? Because usually you don’t find out what it costs until you’re way on the other side of it anyway, you’ve already had it. So they’re just layers and layers of factors that keep combining. And now it feels like it’s all driving costs up every year, but then it has this exponential wave of momentum behind it. And it compounds. If a bunch of us do decide we can’t do it anymore, because then we get into the situation the Affordable Care Act was trying to prevent. If the only people buying insurance are people who are going to use it a lot, then it gets even more expensive. Because what you really need for any insurance to work are a whole lot of houses that don’t burn down and a whole lotta cars that aren’t in accidents and a whole lot of people who only need that annual preventive visit. That’s the only way that it economically works on the other side. And I think Congress, by ignoring this issue for so long, is contributing to us entering into that insurance death spiral that back in 2010 we were worried about.

Sarah [00:30:39] Yeah. And I just feel like this whole like we have to figure something out, that’s what people resent. Why am I voting for you? Why am paying taxes if at the end of the day I have to figured it all out myself.

Beth [00:31:01] That’s right. We always end our show with something Outside of Politics and then question how far Outside of Politics it actually is, which is probably the case today. We’re just going to play a little bit of this commercial from CBC Gem, which is a streaming service in Canada for you, about customer service.

CBC Gem Instagram Clip [00:31:15]

@cbcgem

CBC Gem on Instagram: "it’s called customer service
📺: Barone…

Beth [00:31:37] I laughed so hard when I watched this, Sarah. It just felt like it got to, I don’t know, a healthy percentage of the dynamics in society right now for me.

Sarah [00:31:45] I don’t think I laughed. I think I was like this is too accurate. This is too accurate even to laugh at because people do. They just want to fight

Beth [00:31:56] I can’t decide why that is. If it is like everything we just talked about, that in so many places you’re just swirling with resentment, that every problem feels too big to get your arms around, and so you’ll take it out on the cashier in front of you, that there aren’t cashiers anymore even to take it out at. That you’re looking to feel something? I don’t know what it is, but I do think that there are a lot of people just walking around like, let’s go. I’m ready to have something small and manageable to vent my rage on.

Sarah [00:32:33] It’s so many things. One is if people are paying a lot, they’re mad about it. Even if it’s perfect. She’s mad that she’s-- I don’t know if that’s what’s happening in this commercial or that’s what they’re implying. But I do think a lot of it is people are just mad at how much they have spent. It’s a lot. Everything is very expensive. I hate to just keep on that, but damn. I just went to our local coffee shop. I got a coffee and a little baby waffle and it was $20. And I know the owners. I’m not mad at them. I don’t begrudge them. I know that is a fair and accurate representation of their expenses, but damn, it’s a lot of money. You know what I’m saying? And so I think if you don’t know the owner’s and you feel like it’s like Walmart and you’re the poor cashier on the front line of this retail exchange that people feel like they’re being ripped off, they’re pissed off about it. They’re pissed because they feel like they are being ripped off and they’re going to take it out on somebody. I think another component of this is people are out there-- I can’t stop thinking about this stupid YouTuber who’s like on Instagram also, who goes around and harasses people for not putting up their grocery carts. Have you seen this?

Beth [00:33:40] No.

Sarah [00:33:41] It’s his entire content. He goes around and basically gets in people’s faces for not put their cart back. Really? Listen, I’m all about standards of behavior. Look, I am an Enneagram one. But you don’t give a shit about the people that have to put this cart back. You are doing this because it creates good online content. Not even good. Shit online content that the algorithm rewards. So I think that’s part of it too. It’s like the online fight of it all is infecting everyday life. And some of the people might just be filming it for Instagram. You know what I mean? Some people itching to fight with retailers is because they need YouTube content.

Beth [00:34:27] Or somebody else needs YouTube content. Honestly, that makes me so depressed. I’m having a hard time reacting to it because I think who looks at our society right now and thinks, you know what we need, we need more random policing by people who don’t know what’s going on and who don’t care about each other and who are just doing it to make themselves feel like the best people in the world. We do not need that. I also feel very strongly about putting the grocery cart away. It really matters to me. It matters to me so much that if people don’t, I will put them away for them. And if people have put them in badly, I will line them all up so that they stack to the point where my husband’s always like, you trying to get a job, Beth? But I care about this. So I do my part and move on. Like, why are we looking for a fight with each other? I just don’t know.

Sarah [00:35:19] And I think that anger is a secondary emotion. So if you’re looking for a fight, you’re sad, you’re lonely, you are frustrated, you are grieving. There’s a lot of reasons people feel anger and look for a fight. You’re cranky. Or maybe you’re just, what is it? HALT: hungry, angry, lonely, tired. Maybe you’re just thirsty. I don’t know. Maybe you’ve had too much fucking caffeine because they put 5,500 milligrams of caffeine in fruit juice. I don’t know. Though there’s a lot going on out there, but I think people are just hyped up. And I do think there is a way you do want to be able to blow off steam. It’s probably why pickleball is so massively popular or football. There’s some physicality of wanting to feel like you’ve like-- we have a perpetual chronic stress cycle, right? Because of Trump, because of affordability, because of the internet, because of social media.

Beth [00:36:25] Because our ancestors had to run from lions. All the things.

Sarah [00:36:28] Yeah, because of, because of, because of. And so, our body’s never getting the message to like, okay, you don’t have to fight or flight. I mean, fight, flight or freeze. You don’t ever get the you’re done here message. If your instinct is to fight, you’re stuck there.

Beth [00:36:45] And I’m really struggling with when you talked about, okay, anger is a secondary emotion. You’re sad, you’re lonely, you are tired, you’re hungry, whatever. I totally agree with that. I don’t know how we hardwire it into ourselves that everyone else is, too. Whether they look like it or not. If you are feeling something, it’s a good moment to be like, oh, other people feel this too. Not just because it makes you feel less lonely, but because it makes you give people a break. Like one reason I don’t mind to move somebody else’s grocery cart is because I don’t know what kind of day that person was having. That grocery cart might be left in that parking spot because somebody came with three kids to the grocery store today and just getting those kids back in the car was all that person could do. And you know what, then I am happy today when I’m having a good day to put that back for them. And that sense that I am not the only person having an experience, I just wish we could bottle that and sell it. Because I feel like we’re really struggling with that right now.

Sarah [00:37:53] Yes and the other side of that coin is something we deal with a lot, which is people are angry at us about something and perhaps they share that anger with other Instagram commenters and they think everybody is mad at us about that, which means they’re right. And that’s not true. I promise you, whatever you have emailed us about or commented about that you’re mad that we said, we have gotten the exact opposite reaction on a different platform, through email, so you can’t read it publicly, or on a platform you’re not present on. So that decentralization and the algorithmic sorting, people think, oh, yes, everyone feels that way, so that means I’m right to be such a bitch about it. Because I’m right. Clearly, I’m right. Everybody else in the comment thread-- we talked about this on our spicy Substack yesterday. I saw a Substack note that I was like this is outrageous. And I thought surely someone in the comments will be like this is a crazy thing to say. But like me, they probably read everybody going, yes, you’re the rightest person on planet earth, and I’m also furious about it, and was like not worth it and backed away slowly. So they never heard any disagreement. So they thought the reason they were mad was the rightist of all reasons to be mad.

Beth [00:39:09] Yeah, we all just have a lot going on right now. I was having this conversation with one of my daughters in a very intense moment because my daughters are in that age bracket I heard Dr. Lisa talking about this morning. If I can find that reel again, I’ll link it. She said when your kids are 13, everything you do is annoying to them. It doesn’t matter what you do, it is annoying them. If you are doing something that they want to differentiate themselves from, that’s annoying. If you are totally aligned with them, that is also annoying because they’re trying so hard to differentiate themselves from you, right? So I’m having that experience at home. And I said, like, “I understand that you have feelings and that I am hurting them. I just need you to understand that I have them too. That’s all. And you’re not responsible for them, but you should remember that I have them.” Like, that’s where we are. I think there’s been such a message to everybody that we all have our boundaries and we’re not responsible for other people’s feelings, except that we do owe it to each other to remember that we have them and that we can do our best to help each other through these things instead of constantly exacerbating them or manipulating them for our own notoriety and profit.

Sarah [00:40:19] Yeah, I was thinking about this recently as I was talking about how we’re hardest on the ones closest to us. Like we’re hardest on our family members. And I was like beating myself up about it. And I was, like, well, who should I be hard on? Strangers? We all can’t be a soft pillow all the damn time. You know what I mean? My hard edges are going to have to bump up against someone sometime, at some point. Like, what’s the alternative? Perfect self-control all the time. That’s therapeutic culture or algorithmic culture infecting our personal relationships, it’s why no one’s dating. It’s not going to work. It’s tough out there and that’s okay. You know what I mean? The tougher it is, the tougher you get. And I’m pretty tough. I’m proud of how tough I am. And I try to remember that came at cost of other people in my life, of my own anger and my own frustration. And there wasn’t some like perfect way to do that.

[00:41:24] I’ve probably been rude to a retail person I shouldn’t have been rude too. So I’m like trying to balance like, yeah, we all have a lot going on and people have to let off some steam and also that’s okay. Acting like a jerk it’s not the worst thing. Hitting someone, causing physical damage, causing pain, increasing suffering, no good. I don’t know. I liked that the lady was like, yeah. The rest of that sketch is like, yeah, fine. Do you want to do a little bit of this with me? Let’s do it. Maybe the tougher of the among us can volunteer at the front lines to be like, fine. I had a friend talk to me about this. She’s like she came in hot at me, I was a steady presence, and by the end she was crying because she needed to release the bees. So maybe some of this is like the releasing the bees is inevitable. Sometimes you’re going to get stung. You didn’t do anything wrong. And really neither did they, except be human.

Beth [00:42:29] Yeah, and I think that’s why relationships are the key to everything. What rings hollow in this sketch is that the cashier isn’t going to do that, right? That’s the thing you do for people that you are in relationship with. That’s a thing that you do for someone that you love and care about. You say, go ahead and beat me up. I can handle it. And I love you and I know your heart and I know that there’s nothing here that is meant to be cruel to me. But we have a culture that incentivizes us to do that in places where we have no relationships. Perversely, that makes it less likely that we will have those relationships that let us release the bees.

Sarah [00:43:07] And I do think you can have relationships like that that aren’t close and personal and filled with love. I have a lot of relationships. I live in a small town. There are a lot people in my day-to-day life and I am sure I am that person in other people’s day-today life. They get on my nerves. I don’t like how they act. I don’t like the choices they make. But we’re still in a relationship. They’re not going anywhere and neither am I. And so I just make space for that. And I’m like, okay, well, that’s how they are. They’re annoying. It’s okay. And I am sure they feel the same way about me. You know what I mean? I think about the baristas in that coffee shop I just was talking about, who put up with my annoying kids when they go there after school. They don’t love my kids. I think some of them do, but you know what I mean? They’re not in close personal relationships with my kids, but they’re in community with my kids. And so they’ll look the other way when Felix is annoying or they’ll tell him to cut the hell out. So I think there’s a bigger spectrum of allowance here if we can recognize it in ourselves and find some space for it with our neighbors, with our retail clerks we see every day, with just acquaintances that we’re just passing.

Beth [00:44:24] Well, that’s what I mean about injecting into your system the idea that everybody has feelings because my baseline is everybody’s annoying. Like I’m annoying. I annoy myself. You know what I’m mean? Everybody’s annoying. We are not ever going to be perfectly calibrated to each other.

Sarah [00:44:43] Not me, Beth. I’m a damn delight.

Beth [00:44:48] That’s the thing. If we were, it wouldn’t be interesting. Part of what we spent our Spicy episode that’s on Substack yesterday talking about is this great feminization debate that’s been everywhere. And I’ve been watching people say like “I’m canceling my New York Times subscription because of this opinion piece. This was an evil headline and a terrible thing to write.”, And I’m just like the job of the New York Times opinion page is to be interesting. We’re all talking about this because it’s interesting.

Sarah [00:45:25] A lot of farming. Interesting.

Beth [00:45:27] It doesn’t mean that these are great arguments that I’m adopting. And if you listen to our bonus episode, you will hear that I am not adopting them. But that annoyance often leads you somewhere. It’s really the only way to get somewhere a lot of times. And so I think this reel is interesting because it didn’t end with the lady going, “Here’s your gift card, have a nice day.” It ended with her saying like I see what’s going on with you and you want to have it out. Fine. And then at the end they go, thanks. Thanks for letting me have that friction so I can move on with my day now. That’s interesting. And so I hope since you mentioned us irritating people, I hope where we irritate people, it has like that grittiness to be interesting and worth spending your time thinking about and struggling with a little bit.

Sarah [00:46:22] And thanks to Katie, one of our EPs, for sending us this video and saying, “What do you think about this?” That was great and helpful.

Beth [00:46:31] And thanks to all of you for listening. Thank you to all of you who make these episodes possible. If you’re considering upgrading to a paid membership with us, we really appreciate that. Go to pantsuitpoliticsshow.com to get those Spicy bonus episodes, More to Say, and Good Morning. Seven extra episodes a week for only $15 a month. We will be back with you next week for brand new episodes of Pantsuit Politics. Until then, have the best weekend available to you.

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Pantsuit Politics is hosted by Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers. The show is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. Alise Napp is our Managing Director and Maggie Penton is our Director of Community Engagement.

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