Thanks Mike, and thank you for including the article on Potter. One has in
conclude that much of what happens in the US doesn't happen in the public
interest. It happens in the corporate interest. The democratic ideal of
government to serve everybody has been subverted to government that serves the
interests that fund politicians to get them elected. Politicians have become
lobbyists.
Yet America still has room for the honest idealism that has moved it along over
the centuries. While the Obamas and Potters may appear to be fighting a losing
battle, they still continue to fight, doing whatever they can to promote the
interests of the general public. And the general public is showing signs of
increasing dissatisfaction. The recognition that it has become the "99%" and
the formation of the Occupy Movement suggest that people are fed up with the
growth of an America that largely works to serve special interests.
Ed
________________________________
From: Mike Spencer <mspen...@tallships.ca>
To: futurework@lists.uwaterloo.ca
Sent: Saturday, October 19, 2013 1:36:19 AM
Subject: [Futurework] Re: The American Health Care racket
Ed wrote:
> Here's something I posted to my blog of four years ago on American
> health care.
>
> [....]
>
> The American Healthcare racket
> Sunday, Aug 2, 2009
>
> I managed to find myself in front of the TV watching Bill Moyers
> Journal.
>
> Moyers dealt with health care reform. His guest was Wendell Potter a
> former VP of a major US health insurer, CIGNA. Potter had left CIGNA
> because he could no longer morally tolerate how his company and
> other insurers were handling the health of Americans, and because of
> the kinds of lies they were telling the public.
>
> [snip]
For-profit insurance for medical and health care has long seemed to me
a contradiction and entirely the wrong model. And under the current
paradigm for business success, insurance is essentially a play in
high-stakes finance. The actual bones, kidneys and afflictions of the
insured are externalities, rather like the expensive and wasteful cow
in a financial model of the dairy industry.
Once anything gets established as an "industry", particularly a
for-profit industry, there emerges an organized campaign to ensure
that the "industry", however problematical, is fed and grows; the bigger
the "industry" becomes, the more powerful becomes that campaign. That's
true regardless of the social harm that may accompany the actual role
that such an industry plays on society.
In that light, the present US medical care system is a pit of
malfeasance and the privatization of prisons is a potential and
emerging horror. Not to mention privatized for-profit armed force like
Blackwater (now Xe).
About the time of your blog post, I quoted here on FW from this piece:
http://www.truthout.org/072609R
where there are some details about Wendell Potter's epiphany and
conversion.
- Mike
--
Michael Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada .~.
/V\
mspen...@tallships.ca /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/ ^^-^^
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