fillosophy

Topic 1: Privatization

The ideas behind Socialized/Universal Health Care – Depending on your view on America and how realistic your understanding of the economic, corporate and medical systems is, you’ll either hope for socialized health care, or not. The main argument against socialized health care is “big government”; wherein, if you’re against socialized structure at all, and wish to see no government intervention in anything, you’ll hope to god this will never happen, and therefore, should also desire privatized fire fighting services, police services, schooling, library, postal, and military services.

Given the history of this nation’s ability to trust privatized corporations with foundational objects of structured infrastructure and support, namely telecom and utilities; the obvious conclusion in privatizing any of these services leads to the biggest flaw in “free market” capitalism, greed. Greed drives corporations to abuse the American people, obviously. The most up-front example of this would be AT&T, they’re out pining for more control over communication, and the Internet. Being one of the foremost lobbyists in the fight for Net Neutrality, and now that land-lines are optional with Vonage, Skype, and cellular network reliability on the rise, they’re out seeking what every company with share holders is going to look for… more profit in more markets.

Another fantastic example is the privatization of local power utilities. San Diego, a few years go, went from having and operating SDG&E, to it being owned by the Sempra Energy company, and of course, we’ve seen price hikes and rate increases at a rate higher than we would have ever seen if SDG&E remained a controlled, non-corporate, entity. CEO’s need money, share holders need money, and more importantly, they can never have enough money, especially your money. That is the American way, the capitalist environment in which we live, and you can hope and pray to abandon this environment, or think you can change the system from within to stop these corporate moguls from taking advantage, but in the end, they’re not people, their legal entities. They don’t die, they can even be absorbed by other legal entities, and in they will out live you, out fight you, and out control you; those are the facts.

Privatized health care has yielded no exceptions. Companies with that much financial obligation require share holders, and must be public companies; corporations require actions to be taken to make profits – not only to retain share holders, but to fulfill their legal obligation to those share holders. How is it that anyone ever wanted the privatization of a system that is supposed to help our nation’s sick, when privatization and thus incorporation, is profit based, not performance based.

A smaller scale example would be; in the sense of a salesman. You take a salesman that gets paid a salary, regardless of sales and performance, he gets paid a paycheck, and if he does a good job during the year, he gets a bonus. Chances are, that salesman will perform better than a commission (profit based) salesman, in that a commission salesman will do whatever it takes to screw a customer to ensure maximized profits immediately, and potentially losing future referral from that customer, leaving the consumer holding the shit end of the deal, which the salaried salesman doesn’t feel the pressure to maximize immediate profits, and as a result, work with his clientele to ensure they’re get a great deal on his products, while making sure his employer is happy with his performance so he can get recognized for a  job well done when it comes time for a raise or bonus. How does this apply to the health care example? Easy; instant gratification and profits are a downfall in the consumer market, and right now, the Health Care system is a consumer market, where they’re selling us our health… Putting a price tag on a cancer patient, on a finger (ref: Sicko, Michael Moore), or child care, pediatrics, surgeries, prescriptions for our elderly.

You can argue that big government isn’t the way to go with Health Care, because it will conclude to higher taxes, and for those of you who are healthy, the American way is to say “I’m healthy, and don’t want to lose my paycheck to some free riding unemployed citizen”. This mentality is VERY common, and a very common argument amongst our ‘sensitive’, fellow American. I don’t like the fact that we’re a cultureless society with out honor or values, just as much as the next intelligent being. I also don’t appreciate the lack of drive and motivation amongst or citizens. But that still doesn’t give an excuse to sink to a level of anti-humanitarianism, wishing for a nation filled with an “every man for himself” barbarian-like outlook. Hell, I think even barbarians looked out for one another in their clan.

enrique
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