Why Big Business made a deal for Obama Care
Aug 17th, 2009 by David Anderson
By John Stossel submitted from getLiberty.org as open source for public distribution to promote their new blog
“What disturbs Americans of all ideological persuasions is the fear that almost everything, not just government, is fixed or manipulated by some powerful hidden hand,” Frank Rich wrote in Sunday’s New York Times.
That manipulation should disturb us. But contrary to Rich, it is not the work of “corporatists” who have sprung up to attack progressive reforms proposed by Obama and the Democratic majority. Manipulation is what we got many years ago when we traded a more or less free market for the “progressive” interventionist state. When government is big, the well-connected always have an advantage over the rest of us in influencing public policy.
Observe: Although President Obama and big-government activists demonize health-insurance companies, the companies “are still mostly on board with the president’s effort to overhaul the U.S. health-care system,” the Wall Street Journal reports; and …
Although the activists criticize Big Pharma, “The drug industry has already contributed millions of dollars to advertising campaigns for the health care overhaul through the advocacy groups like Healthy Economies Now and Families USA. It has spent about $1 million on similar advertisements under its own name,” the Times reports.
Big Pharma and Big Insurance want Obama-style health-care reform?
It’s not so hard to understand. “The drug makers stand to gain millions of new customers,” the Times said.
And from the Journal: “If health legislation succeeds, the [insurance] industry would likely get a fresh batch of new customers. In particular, many young and healthy people who currently forgo coverage would be forced to sign up.” No wonder insurers are willing to stop “discriminating” against sick people. (Forget that the essence of insurance is discrimination according to risk.)
Not that Big Pharma and Big Insurance like every detail of the Democratic plan. Drug companies don’t want Medicare negotiating drug prices—for good reason. If it forces drug prices down, research and development will be discouraged. (Depending whom you believe, Obama may or may not have agreed with the drug companies on this point.)
As for the insurance companies, they worry—legitimately—that a government insurance company—the so-called public option”—would drive them out of business. This isn’t alarmism. It’s economics. The public option would have no bottom line to worry about and therefore could engage in “predatory pricing” against the private insurers.
But despite these differences, the biggest companies in these two industries are on board with “reform.”
It illustrates economist Steven Horwitz’s First Law of Political Economy: “No one hates capitalism more than capitalists.” In this case, big business wants to shape—and profit from—what inevitably will be an interventionist health-care reform. Can you think of the last time a major business supported a truly free market in anything?
In light of all this, it’s funny to watch Democrats and their activist allies panic over the protests at congressional town meetings around the country. Tools of the corporate interests! they cry. But anyone opposing “socialized medicine” at the meeting can’t be a mouthpiece for big business because, as we’ve seen, big business supports government control. Conservative groups may be encouraging people to vent their anger at congressmen who pass burdensome legislation without even bothering to read it, but that’s no reason to insult the protestors as pawns. What’s wrong with organizations helping like-minded people to voice their opinions? Why do Democrats, such as Speaker Nancy Pelosi, dismiss citizen participation as “AstroTurf”—not real grassroots—only when citizens oppose the kind of big government they favor?
They weren’t so dismissive when George W. Bush was president and people protested—appropriately—his accumulation of executive powers.
“When handfuls of Code Pink ladies disrupted congressional hearings or speeches by Bush administration officials,” Glenn Reynolds writes, “it was taken as evidence that the administration’s policies were unpopular, and that the thinking parts of the populace were rising up in true democratic fashion. … But when it happens to Democrats, it’s something different: A threat to democracy, a sign of incipient fascism … House Speaker Nancy Pelosi calls the ‘Tea Party’ protesters Nazis. … ”
So when lefties do it, it’s called “community organizing.”
When conservatives and libertarians do it, it’s “AstroTurf.”
Give me a break.
John Stossel is co-anchor of ABC News’ 20/20 and the author of Myth, Lies, and Downright Stupidity.
Great article and a lot of good insights.
Increasing government control over health care is not likely to free us from the clutches of the “evil” insurance and pharmasutical companies. Rather the potential is there for those who have corrupted the system to gain more influence over it and turn an even bigger profit.
I stopped for the moment at this line:
“the essence of insurance is discrimination according to risk”
Thank God that person is not in charge of my family access to healthcare.
Risk discrimination is legit for most insurance, certainly life insurance, but we all know it’s wrong to say the essence of Health Insurance is discrimination according to risk. We had to pass laws to prevent that from happening.
The essence of health insurance is to have a huge pool of money available, spread the risk as wide as possible, so that all participants can get the best possible medical care when they need it.
The essence of Health Insurance has nothing at all to do with making a healthy profit. Healthcare is a people, community thing. It is one of the few products that the entire population theoretically must have simultaneous access to. More akin to the fire department than to Macy’s. That is why many of us believe healthcare rightly belongs in the public sector, not the for profit sector.
Why is health insurance a communty thing? Because YOU want it to be. Health insurance is not something granted by God. He doesn’t give us life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness with a free HMO card. No, your health is your own responsibility. Your life is what you make it. It stands to reason that the same choice you have in determining what career path to choose should be displayed in what steps you take to stay healthy and protect your health. If health insurance was such a necessary right, where was it the last thousand years? Was it any less necessary in the late 1700′s? How bout in the biblical age? Did doctors in the late 1700′s go around curing the sick for free? NO! They bartered and traded services for things they needed or for money. In many cases doctors were local and so respected and familiar that if a family couldn’t pay they would “work something out”. These days the doctor would be sued if they tried that they would be beaten down in court by some left wing lunatic lawyer screaming about someone’s civil rights being taken away by cutting out the insurance company. Take the case in the State of NY where a General Practitioner tried to charge a flat rate of $70 per family for unlimited office visits per month. His customers loved it, he loved it and best of all, the insurance companies weren’t involved at all. This included things like X-rays, blood tests, etc. New York State came in and demanded he stop it or shut down his practice. He jumped through a million hoops and the state said fine, you can do it but you have to charge at least a $20 co-pay per visit on top of the $70 per month. He said he didn’t need the money, that he was fine with the $70 and the state wouldn’t hear it.
Moral of the story? You liberals are full of crap. This isn’t about healthcare as a right of all people, that’s just what you say to bring people on to your side. It’s not about healthcare reform or those evil insurance companies profits. If that was the case, Doctors like the New York example should be trumpeted at the highest peaks. No, your motivation is MUCH simpler. Power and money. You want the power to take the money from the percieved rich and to redistribute it the way YOU feel it should be distributed. It’s about your Socialist agendas and it has NOTHING to do with the people you claim to care about.
Lenin once stated that when it came time to hang the capitalists, the prospective victims would compete for the rope contract.
Too many businessmen are willing to pay tribute to their enemies in the hope of reducing the harm that would befall them. The statement about “Millions for defense but not once cent for tribute” seems to be an alien concept to the suited appeasers.
Sad fact is the Liberals (21% of USA) hate big business, big pharma, big everything unless it gives big government a chance to expand a bad policy.
Why do they hate anything with a profit but love more taxes and more government.
Mike Protack
David: “Manipulation is what we got many years ago when we traded a more or less free market for the “progressive” interventionist state. When government is big, the well-connected always have an advantage over the rest of us in influencing public policy.”
I don’t agree, based on the Clinton and Bush years, when government stepped aside and Wall Street corporatist greed took over and ran our economy into the ground. I don’t think anyone disagrees with that observation!
Now we have the Repub base wishing for a repeat of laissez faire free market economics. Are they nuts??? Not now!
In my view, the core problem we have is that Wall Street and the Government are one and the same, due to the existence of huge legal bribes (campaign finance and lobbyist donations). The rest of us: Be damned!
Once we solve this problem, once we know that there is fair and adequate oversight to assure that the law is upheld and the interests of the people are paramount, then we will be back on the right track.
The way we are now, with the huge deficits required to pull us back up from the economic abyss having the potential to permanently damage us, we are at great risk of more serious failure.
Thus, government has been forced to play a more pervasive role than we would like; but, there is no other choice, certainly not to continue the same ideology that has brought us to our knees.
Obama is trying to right our ship of state, in my view, yet we have protesters now coming to his town halls armed with assault rifles, rifles and hand guns. What does that tell you about our future? There is a red flag that needs immediate attention!!!
The hierarchy of the left understands full-well what’s going on (although they don’t understand the average Americans aversion to their plan). It’s the naive ‘liberal’ nitwit masses who can’t absorb the nuances of the BO/corporate agenda. And they’re supposed to be sooooo much smarter than the rest of us. In reality, they are cattle, without the ability to think, only to follow. But, unlike cattle, they volunteer for that ring through their nose.
Pathetic.