1
1
Further, many health care insurers routinely deny required benefits to their customers. Yet, they managed to come up with more than $1.4 million a day and $40 million to date to lobby on the Hill, in addition to coughing up almost $170 million to federal lawmakers in 2007 and 2008.
Like CIGNA's Edward Hanway, who vacations in a $13 million beach house on the New Jersey shore, they'll fight like demons to keep their cushy compensations unless absolutely forced to yield up a few grudging concessions. After all, that's the American way.
As inother similar corporatist plutocracies, you get ahead by taking all that you can get for yourself regardless of the consequences for anyone else. You peddle influence, talk about trickle down effect and patience to placate the opposition, and make out like a crook in the meanwhile.
Indeed, this view corresponds well with the positions held by many legislators. Certainly, they too, are combating medical reforms as they do not want to see their own gargantuan profits shrink.
As Lindsay Renick Mayer states in "Congressional Lawmakers Invest in Their (Financial) Health":
"In past years, congressional debates over health care may have been shaped, in some instances, by such personal investments, said Charles Silver, a professor of law at the University of Texas. Campaign contributions and the revolving door between the private and public sector also play a role," Silver said. "Obviously, there is a conflict, unless the investment is in a blind trust or similar vehicle so the officeholder is not aware of it," Silver said. "The conflict may be mild or severe, depending on many factors, such as the nature of the investment, whether the company is publicly traded and, therefore, held by mutual funds, pension funds, and other funds in which large numbers of Americans participate...After hearing from experts, we talked to some of the lawmakers on the five committees that have been primarily responsible for drafting comprehensive health-related proposals. In 2007, 54 current members of these committees had between $31 million and $57.9 million invested in health companies (including in health sector targeted mutual funds). Here's how a few of their finances looked in 2008 and 2007, and their thoughts on whether they see any conflict of interest in these investments..." [2]
All in all, then, the US is much like the described locations that the two American volunteers visited. We simply will continue to have a shortage in health-care provision just as much as these other places do in which some receive adequate care while others are completely cast aside as discarded members of society, much in the way that the homeless Americans, the street people and the tent-city dwellers,are treated today.
Even as this is the case, the USA differs from those foreign counterparts because their deficit in medical provision derives from real critical shortages in funds, medical personnel and supplies. In contrast,the American lacks arise from avarice, self-interest and corrupt legislative policies aimed to maintain the status quo entirely at the expense of the American public.
In the end, the heath-care debate is not about care at all. Instead, it's about the amount of money that government, HMO and pharmaceutical leaders are personally willing to give up.
Accordingly, it's clear that many Congressional representatives have no interest in evaluating even a few of the successful models of universal coverage that numerous other countries can provide. Instead, they are, typically, in collusion with big business to stymie any meaningful reforms.
As Thomas Paine succinctly put it,"Beware the greedy hand of government, thrusting itself into every corner and crevice of industry." It's a far stretching hand with an iron grip that won't let go of its gains until forced to do so.
REFERENCES
