Sunday, July 19, 2009

The "American" Way

I am slowly learning, after 65 years, just how frightened American big biz is of government.

Why?

Woven into big biz's DNA is an overwhelming conviction that it's way is the right way, that its wealth and power proves moral right, that American workers are their unruly children, and if the workers only knew how nice big biz really was, they'd knuckle under and buckle down, being grateful for the crumbs that fall from the table.

The history of labor and management in this country is abysmal.

It is throughout the world, but in much of the world, big gov has come to the aid of the worker, enabling them to unionize and bargain for more than crumbs, insuring workers' rights and lowering health care costs while boosting health care results by tying health care into the gov's side of things with a single-payer system.

Nowhere else in the civilized world is medical insurance linked to employment, but big biz agreed to this in the post-WW2 years to forestall the gov from doing it.

We will NEVER resolve the issue of health care as long as we leave it in the hands of big biz. Health care belongs in the hands of the government - this will immediately lower the huge administrative costs presently "enjoyed" by the health insurance industry - 30% of every dollar is sucked up into the pockets of the companies - the average CEO salary is 14 million, not to mention the endless perks engineered into their contracts.

And now the commercials begin - funded by the mega billions of the health insurance industry highlighting the evils of Canada's health care and touting the wonders of America's healthy industry - because it's NOT health care in America, it's an industry making billions for its managers while:

DENYING insurance to 50 million Americans.
INADEQUATELY insuring millions more.
SADDLING many with impossible deductibles.
RATIONING HEALTH CARE to all the top echelons of our society.

The simple reality: you and I are a cash cow for the industry, at the expense of our health.

Is this the American way?

It is if you're big biz.

1 comment:

  1. What's the difference between big business and government? Aren't we cash cows to both? All have sinned and fallen short--people in business and people in government. To think the government will have pure motives is as ridiculous as thinking the leaders of a business will have good motives. History tells us otherwise. Perhaps the solution is pitting the various forces against each other--allowing one side to enforce restraint on the other.

    ReplyDelete