Empire of Illusion - Chris Hedges [85]
The grip of corporations on government is not limited to the defense industry. It has leeched into nearly every aspect of the economy. The attempt to create a health-care plan that also conciliates the corporations that profit from the misery and illnesses of tens of millions of Americans is naïve, at best, and probably disingenuous. This conciliation insists that we can coax these corporations, which are listed on the stock exchange and exist to maximize profit, to transform themselves into social-service agencies that will provide adequate health care for all Americans.
“Obama offers a false hope,” says Dr. John Geyman, former chair of family medicine at the University of Washington and author of Do Not Resuscitate: Why the Health Insurance Industry Is Dying, and How We Must Replace It. “We cannot build on or tweak the present system. Different states have tried this. The problem is the private insurance industry itself. It is not as efficient as a publicly financed system. It fragments risk pools, skimming off the healthier part of the population and leaving the rest uninsured or underinsured. Its administrative and overhead costs are five to eight times higher than public financing through Medicare. It cares more about its shareholders than its enrollees or patients. A family of four now pays about $12,000 a year just in premiums, which have gone up by 87 percent from 2000 to 2006. The insurance industry is pricing itself out of the market for an ever-larger part of the population. The industry resists regulation. It is unsustainable by present trends.”
Our health-care system is broken. There are some 46 million Americans without coverage and tens of millions with inadequate policies that severely limit what kinds of procedures and treatments they can receive. Eighteen thousand people die, according to the Institute of Medicine, every year because they can’t afford health care.
“There are at least 25 million Americans who are underinsured,” Geyman says. “Whatever coverage they have does not come close to covering the actual cost of a major illness or accident.”
The corporations that run our for-profit health-care industry would be shut down if single-payer, not-for-profit health-care was provided for all Americans. The for-profit health-care industry, like the defense industry, has vigorously fought to protect itself through campaign contributions and lobbying. They have placed profit before the common good. A study by Harvard Medical School found that national health insurance would save the country $350 billion a year. But Medicare does not make campaign contributions. The private health-care industries do.
“The private health insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industry completely and totally oppose national health insurance,” says Stephanie Woolhandler, one of the founders of Physicians for a National Health Program. “The private health insurance companies would go out of business. The pharmaceutical companies are afraid that a national health program will, as in Canada, be able to negotiate lower drug prices. Canadians pay 40 percent less for their drugs. We see this on a smaller scale in the United States, where the Department of Defense is able to negotiate pharmaceutical prices that are 40 percent lower.”
We cannot improve the system by expanding government oversight or improve for-profit health care by requiring doctors and hospitals to prove they provide quality medical services. Proposals to require insurance companies to use more income from premiums for patient care or link payment with reported quality are unworkable. Nor will turning record-keeping from paper to electronic data blunt rising