Back OpEd News | |||||||
Original Content at https://www.opednews.com/articles/Big-Corporation-Parasitism-by-Rob-Kall-Corporations_Wall-Street-Parasites-140706-708.html (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). |
July 6, 2014
Big Corporation Parasitism and Me
By Rob Kall
I went to a local pharmacy to pick up a prescription- for a 3 month supply. The pharmacy tech plugged my data into their system and the 3 month Rx was rejected, with only a one month supply allowed. To obtain a 3 month supply I had to get it through the company that manages prescription plans for my healthcare insurer. It bothered me that I couldn't get the prescription from a local business giving local people jobs
::::::::
Factoring human and ecological costs into price analysis.
Today I went to a local pharmacy to pick up a prescription my doctor gave me-- for a three month supply. The pharmacy tech plugged my data into their system and the three month prescription was rejected, with only a one month supply allowed.
To obtain a three month supply I had to get it through Futurescript, the company that manages prescription plans for my healthcare insurer. (actually, Futurescript is owned by Catalyst Health Solutions Inc., which is a subsidiary of SXC Health Solutions.
It bothered me that I couldn't get the prescription from a local business giving local people jobs.
It may be that it is cheaper for Futurescript to mail order supply the medication. But that can lead to local jobs lost. Local jobs inject spending into the local economy AND pay federal taxes.
Saving ten cents on a prescription might cost fifteen cents or a dollar in terms of lost tax revenues and re-investment in the community economy.
That doesn't matter to a for-profit company. But if we had single payer, medicare for all healthcare, then those other costs would come into play as part of federal, state and municipal budgets.
This raises a few considerations.
For profit companies exploit opportunities regardless of the impact on the community or the healthy functioning of the optimized employment environment. Jobs as assets of value can be quantified and added into cost equations that are intended to optimize employment, not just simple cost. Other costs, like pollution and actuarially calculated costs of cancer treatment for the victims, can be determined and added into the big picture cost assessment.
Capitalism as an economic system runs with or without the "indirect" costs I describe above. It should not. When companies omit the considerations mentioned above they evade responsibility and literally parasitize the system and local communities. Talk about welfare. That is welfare-- or worse, since it is destructive, which makes it more like an affliction or infestation.
This is a case where corporations, acting independently are stealing from local communities, stealing from the commons. Libertarians like to talk about getting rid of regulations, but we need MORE regulations to stop the kind of theft big corporations engage in every day.
Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect,
connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.
Check out his platform at RobKall.com
He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity
He's given talks and workshops to Fortune
500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered
first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and
Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful
people on his Bottom Up Radio Show,
and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and
opinion sites, OpEdNews.com
more detailed bio:
Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, debillionairizing the planet and the Psychopathy Defense and Optimization Project.
Rob Kall's Bottom Up Radio Show: Over 400 podcasts are archived for downloading here, or can be accessed from iTunes. Or check out my Youtube Channel
Rob Kall/OpEdNews Bottom Up YouTube video channel
Rob was published regularly on the Huffingtonpost.com for several years.
Rob is, with Opednews.com the first media winner of the Pillar Award for supporting Whistleblowers and the first amendment.
To learn more about Rob and OpEdNews.com, check out A Voice For Truth - ROB KALL | OM Times Magazine and this article.
For Rob's work in non-political realms mostly before 2000, see his C.V.. and here's an article on the Storycon Summit Meeting he founded and organized for eight years.
Press coverage in the Wall Street Journal: Party's Left Pushes for a Seat at the Table
Talk Nation Radio interview by David Swanson: Rob Kall on Bottom-Up Governance June, 2017Here is a one hour radio interview where Rob was a guest- on Envision This, and here is the transcript..
To watch Rob having a lively conversation with John Conyers, then Chair of the House Judiciary committee, click here. Watch Rob speaking on Bottom up economics at the Occupy G8 Economic Summit, here.
Follow Rob on Twitter & Facebook.
His quotes are here
Rob's articles express his personal opinion, not the opinion of this website.
Join the conversation:
On facebook at Rob Kall's Bottom-up The Connection Revolution
and at Google Groups listserve Bottom-up Top-down conversation