Posts tagged ‘mandates’

Separation of Corporation and State: Healthcare

by , posted on Saturday, April 3rd, 2010 at 7:59 am

My political career began on a cold evening in the dimly lit labor hall of Laborers Local 362 on Cabin Town Road, in Bloomington, IL.  It was the monthly Democratic Party meeting and I had no intention of speaking. After representatives from other campaigns spoke, I felt the need to represent my 2004 presidential pick.  The words fell out of my mouth with no cadence or inspiration and I’m confident that nothing I said was remembered by the 20-25 attendees who were being pressured by party leaders to send Rod Blagojevich another $500 contribution. But there it was: the 12 words that have somehow come to define my political activism: “The task of my generation is the separation of corporation and state.”

Perhaps the biggest abuse of taxpayer money to bail out a gang of undeserving corporations was the bank bailout. Like many people, I was outraged and nearly driven to put my name back on the ballot when the Democratic-controlled U.S. Congress passed a $700 billion bank bailout to help Bush put the finishing touches on his corporate-state presidency.  But I sat back and waited, overlooking the first year of Obama’s presidency that featured the more bailouts, more blank-check spending on Bush’s wars for profit, a wholesale attack on public education, and now, a healthcare bill written by corporations for corporations.

And so, I have come full circle as my next political steps take me back to the beginning and those first 12 words.  This piece on healthcare aims to show how the will of the people was replaced by the will of America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) while support for Newt Gingrich’s Contract on America grows.  Among those following the health care reform process, it is commonly known that AHIP, the voice of insurance companies on capital hill, has played a significant role in drafting the bill.

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Nate Silver’s worst argument yet for Healthcare Privateering

by , posted on Monday, December 21st, 2009 at 7:13 pm

I don’t know why Nate and others keep emphasizing the low profit margins of the insurance companies.

Accounting tricks aside (e.g., counting increased perks as “costs”, etc.), the lavish compensations and bureacratic bloat are devices a “marquis class’ of individuals, who bring NOTHING of value to the system, use to extort “protection” money from vulnerable citizens. By the way, the bottom line is profit VOLUME, which is substantial.

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/12/insurance-stocks-rise-on-news-of-health.html

One function of government is to protect its citizens against persons or institutions that can do harm, such as predators in the “healthcare provider” business. Is it that hard for the apologists of the Democratic “healthcare” bill to understand how distressing this is to progressives, or any good government types?

Profit has NO PLACE in a system of basic health care. Let the marketplace work its wonders in cosmetic surgery. The fact that profit margins are now inextricably imbedded in this push for universal healthcare is going to explode this effort down the way, and not very far off.

We know how this is going to work. We’ll be forced to give them our money (and since I’m 50, I may be forced to pay 1/4 of my income to these criminals) right up front – with the government being the collection muscle. And there is nothing NOTHING to force these guys to behave. The sharks will walk off with their compensations, and we’ll be forced back to square zero, with a more impoverished society, and the problems not solved.

The people running these “healthcare” protection rackets have no care for the public, the system, or even their own companies. We’ve already seen CEOs walk off with over $1B in compensation… they don’t have to look back.

They shouldn’t exist. All of these guys in the privateering “healthcare” racket losing their jobs would be a small blip in the unemployment rate. I’d rather some of them use their actuarial skills toward optimizing high-speed rail systems or smart power grids.

Don’t. Not this, not to these thugs. No.

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