Friday, November 19, 2010
Legal Organized Crime
Here is a podcast Public Radio interview with Wendell Potter an ex-(Health) Insurance Company Executive (Cigna) telling it like it really is. But we all already knew that Health Insurance is not really about Health at all. Since becoming a For-Profit industry it is only about Profit for shareholders and corporate executives. I've always said that Insurance is Legalized Organized Crime. Not only do they use millions of our dollars to lobby against us instead of paying for health care, but they actively seek to avoid paying out health care dollars for actual health care. The Corporations are truly destroying democracy.
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5 comments:
Glad to see that you've seen the light.
Potter did an excellent interview with Bill Moyers some time back in which he detailed his epiphany about what he was doing while steering corporate PR for CIGNA.
Potters is pretty brave to do what he's doing.
But it all goes back to something I said with friends this weekend. Our nominal military budget each YEAR is $600 Billion. We could cut that in HALF and still have an adequate defensive force.
The other $300 billion, well here's what I'd use it on:
1) That rail that would do Boston to NYC in 85 minutes would start construction NOW.
2) I'd shore up infrastructure replacing ancient bridges on highways, streets etc.
3) Education would get a fair dose of money to improve teaching and the schools and to scrap No Child Left Behind.
4) With the leftover money create a true universal health care system in the United States, insurance companies be damned.
Sure we could do more like eradicating poverty. Just think about the possibilities.
4)
I've been saying this for years in casual conversations with friends (not on my blog, though occasionally I rant against the wealthy bastards that are ruining our economy and democracy).
Like your $300 billion windfall - We all speculated on the economic bailout a few years ago, postulating the theory that by giving each citizen $200,000 or so, taxable, then let them pay off their debts, their mortgages, shore up their mom and pop businesses and buy new cars and stuff, it would help the economy bore than any bailout.
Like I said, sometimes "common sense" economics is smarter than all the professional economists theorizing their great solutions.
It didn't help either that Obama (whom I voted for BTW) and the democrats sold us down the river by not insisting there be a public option or single payer system that all the politician's and their families enjoy themselves.
Once again the big money lobbyist win over our own self interest just like everything else.
I think it was Coolidge who said, "The business of America is business."
What he should have added was, it's also the national religion, and the Almighty Dollar is God.
And as you hinted, now that the Supreme Court has opened the floodgates for corporate contributions, it's hard not to feel that all is lost.
The Roman Empire got so bad that at one point, the imperial office was sold to the highest bidder. How long before our presidency is, too?
And yet the ignorant but righteous masses keep on voting totally against their own self-interest, even when their hardships are increasing. Amazing.
I don't think the government needs to run everything directly, but if you look around the developed world, there are any number of good, efficient, effective models of universal health coverage that could be brought into being here.
But not while there's a dime to be made out of bilking the sick and the helpless, there's way too much profit in it. And in the death machines also, for that matter.
Life(TM) and Death(TM) - brought to you by our sponsor.
That's the American way, right Frank?
Amen to that.
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