Corporate stealth-care
Jeremy Clemmons
Contributing Writer
Those who delude themselves (not us, of course.) that we live in a democracy – whether it be on the Left, the Right, the Center, whomever – could not find a worse time to prove their case than now. Yes, health-care legislation has passed (by the narrowest of margins and through the ghost-from-the-machine process proudly known as reconciliation) … yes, it has passed, but corporate interests still reign. Anticipating approval of the bill in the House, insurance stocks soared. On March 21, CIGNA went up 3.46 percent, United Health Group 2.38 percent, and WellPoint rose steadily at 1.96 percent. And as for the actual bill itself, its shortcomings overwhelm its advantages. After all, if reconciliation was really on the table the entire time why such a half-hearted push for the public option? If bipartisanship was to be abandoned, if the Republicans really didn’t need to be wined and dined, why all the cross-aisle concessions and pork? Obama and the Democrats deserve credit for fulfilling Ted Kennedy’s so-called “fight of his lifetime” (even though the late Senator voted against reform during Nixon’s term), but one is left to wonder if more could have been salvaged.
This country has had a long fascination with hitching its wagon to corporate interests. In the 1970s, the United States backed a coup in Chile, essentially overthrowing the social democratic government in favor of a more “neoliberal” state apparatus. The result was a series of policies informed by professors and former students with University of Chicago, the “Chicago Boys” as they were called; and one of their fondest – and indeed most tragic – ideas was to privatize social security, that is to effectively unravel the social program from the government and place it into the invisible, but seemingly “sturdy,” hand of the free market. Various fiscal collapses of sorts ensured the failure of this methodology (though one would not know it from the propaganda – erm, “reports” – from the Cato Institute and other similar corporate think tanks).
This is not to say that this is exactly what will happen with the health care bill. In fact, it can’t happen: the bill is a kind of potpourri of big government and big business; caps, exchanges, and subsidies for the most ensure that while you might be forced to buy a shoddy product, you’re at least aided and protected in that purchase from some of the not-so-niceties we have come to loathe. But we are not delusional people, remember? We didn’t really expect our democracy to arrive decaffeinated, that heavy doses of Pharma, the AMA, and so on were to be left out of this pot, did we? That is, the true tragedy of the health care legislation isn’t the typical conservative response of anti-business (“too much government!”) or anti-coverage (“too much mandated health care!”), it is rather that business and government interests have been tangoing since day one. Still, one of the difficulties is separating ourselves from the logic of the other dissenter, from Republicans. Sometimes the enemy of my enemy is not my friend. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal (R) spoke recently: “You’ve got a bill that doesn’t lower health-care costs. (It’s) new spending, new debt, new taxes, I think it’s a mistake.” Here the progressive worry about increasing health-care rates is married with the typically conservative discomfort with increased taxes and heightened debt. Is this really the language we want our “opposition” to the bill couched in? Instead of queasy celebration or Tea Party head-nodding we need to follow up on our promises to deliver a health care alternative that is disconnected from the rubric of health insurance companies that created the mess in the first place. If democracy is to be anything but a running joke, there is no other way.
