The business of health care reform (Pincer grasp strategy used by the insurance lobby)

[inthebrain]

I read this and was like WHOA!!!! I had a feeling that something like this was going on but couldn't quite put my fnger on it. It's worth reading the last three or four paragraphs to get how the Dems and Reps are being used (the citizens) and fighting with eachother.


The business of health care reform

MOST GREAT American fortunes were made by capitalists who used the power of government to gain advantages over competitors or to profit from public resources.

For example, the Gilded Age plutocrats—the Vanderbilts, the Astors, the Stewarts, the Goulds—built their railroad-based fortunes on the foundation of $100 million in federal and state grants and 200 million acres of federal land grants.

The Dupont chemical empire owed much to U.S. seizure of German chemical patents and government assistance in building its plants during the First World War. The modern nuclear power industry and the Internet are both products of the privatization of technologies developed in government laboratories.

Or consider the Telecommunications Act of 1996, one of the main legislative achievements (besides ending welfare) that Democratic President Bill Clinton claimed in that election year. The bill, passed overwhelmingly with little public debate and quickly signed by Clinton, took down barriers of ownership and transmission rights of content among major media, radio, phone, and Internet companies.

Although the industry promised a new era of competition that would lead to lower prices and greater choice for consumers, the exact opposite developed. The act unleashed a bacchanal of media mergers and industry consolidation.

In the decade following its passage, cable television rates jumped by almost 50 percent, and local phone charges increased by 20 percent. Under the law, the government gave away to broadcasters digital TV licenses that were valued at the time at $70 billion—one can only guess what they are worth today.

All of this for a total industry investment in the Democratic Party of about $309 million.

Despite the free-market rhetoric that claims “Big Government” and “Big Business” are pitted against each other, big business has always found it useful to invest in politicians and their political parties to win government policies that improve their bottom lines.

http://www.isreview.org/issues/68/editorial.shtml

[inthebrain]

1. up

[inthebrain]

2. up