Aetna™ Wants to Kill Me

It looks like the greedy bureaucrats at Aetna™ have decided that my life is worth less than their bottom line. My doctor has informed me that Aetna™ has denied my claim for a potentially deadly health condition. The reason: pre-existing condition. That's right. They acknowledge my condition to be valid, but since I've had it before I got coverage from Aetna™ they don't want to deal with it.

It wouldn't be fair to just put the blame on Aetna™. After all they simply do what predatory capitalists are supposed to do. That's why I also want to personally thank president Obama and the Democratic party. The reason being that the Health Insurance Reform provision that currently forbids shark insurance companies from denying coverage because of pre-existing condition only applies to people under the age of 19. For everyone else, this provision will not kick in until 2014. You could ask yourself: if Obama could create a provision for everyone under the age of 19 with the stroke of a pen, why couldn't he do it for everyone else? The only cogent answer I can come up with is: cynical political calculation. Basically, most of the goods of the Health Insurance Reform – more apt a description than Health Care Reform – will not come into effect until 2014. It seems that the Democrats and Obama had the bright idea to stake the interest of those whose life hangs in the balance of the pre-existing condition gap against their own re-election hopes. Now that the American people can see the seriousness of the Republican repeal of Health Insurance Reform effort, they will dutifully vote Democratic in 2012 in order to preserve it.

This is a perfect example of what Alain Badiou defines as the essence of modern electoral politics in his 2008 book The Meaning of Sarkozy: fear, and the fear of fear – which in the US would translate as the fear of the Other as fomented by the Republicans, and the fear of the Republican fear as fomented by the liberal Democrats. (More on this topic at some future time).

Small caveat: this cynical political game is going to cost over 100,000 lives. That's because, according to a 2009 Harvard medical study, lack of insurance is responsible for the death of 45,000 Americans every single year. But here comes the rub which exposes the idiocy of the Democratic political calculation: there will be 100,000 less potential Democratic voters who will not be able to vote from their grave in 2012.

Finally, the icing on the cake. To supposedly alleviate this problem of insurance coverage denial because of pre-existing conditions, Obama and the Democrats have come up with the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan. Unfortunately the eligibility requirements state that "if you currently have insurance coverage that doesn’t cover your medical condition ... you are not eligible for the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan." Basically, one is eligible the PCIP government plan only if the insurance company denies coverage altogether. But if the shark insurance company takes your money – i.e. gives you coverage or, more appropriately, the illusion of coverage – and then simply denies the specific claim related to the pre-existing condition, then you get nothing. That's because even if I were to cancel my illusory health insurance policy, I still would not qualify for PCIP since, technically, I was not "denied" insurance coverage. So, while the insurance companies are free to pocket people's premiums in exchange for crumbs, Obama and the Democrats can look like they are doing all they can for those with pre-existing conditions. Simply brilliant.

Long live the Corporate State.

Obama: Old Wine In New Bottle

As I observe the moral implosion of the Democratic leadership, I keep thinking of an essay by Noam Chomsky commenting on the Clinton presidency. In the 1996 essay, titled "Old Wine in New Bottles: A Bitter Taste," Chomsky expands on Paul Krugman's assumption that "bad ideas flourish because they are in the interest of powerful groups." In this case, Krugman was talking about international economic development and specifically about New Zealand; but Chomsky extrapolated this conclusion and applied it to corporate capitalism in general.

In a way, Chomsky's insight presaged Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine," and today, it is easy to see how Obama is simply continuing the regressive policies systematized by Clinton, and put on hyperdrive by Bush. In the essay, Chomsky restates Krugman's conclusion by saying that "the "bad ideas" may not serve the "expressed goal," but they typically turn out to be very good ideas for their proponents." The current health care reform bill is a perfect example of such bad ideas.

The left is understandably dismayed at the form this health care bill is taking, but if we look at its unfolding under the prism of Chomsky's and Klein's analysis, we can see how, in the end, it is all according to plan. Sure, the "realists" will tell you that this is the best thing we can get in the current climate, but their thinking is predicated on an old dichotomy that sees the Democratic party leadership in opposition to the Republican leadership.

Unfortunately, such dichotomy is all for show and nothing more. And all we really need in order to expose the theatrical aspect of this purported opposition between the Republican party and the Democratic party is the following picture:


This is not a portrait of people who disagree with each other. This is the portrait of five masters of the universe showing unity of mind and purpose.

Returning to the health care bill and Chomsky's analysis, he goes on to point out some regularities in the policies imposed by international capital onto unwilling populations around the world, the first being that:

[T]he designers seem to come out quite well, though the experimental subjects, who rarely sign consent forms, quite often take a beating.

The current health care bill will do just that: let the designers (the health insurance companies) come out quite well with the government mandating 30 million new customers to purchase unregulated products from a cartel of colluding private corporations. In this case, we the people are also one of the "rare" examples where we did sign a consent form in the form of a ballot. Unlike other countries around the world who have no say in what the World Bank tells them to do, we actually put the people who are screwing us, and the rest of the world, in charge.

The fact that the current bill does not guarantee any real form of competition in the health care system brings me to another point that Chomsky makes later on in the essay:

Free market doctrine comes in two varieties. The first is the official doctrine that is taught to and by the educated classes, and imposed on the defenceless. The second is what we might call "really existing free market doctrine": For thee, but not for me, except for temporary advantage; I need the protection of the nanny state, but you must learn responsibility under the harsh regimen of "tough love." Those in a position to make choices typically adopt the second version of free market doctrine, the one that has been a prerequisite to development, so the historical record suggests, though not a sufficient condition for it.

This is not only what is happening now with the health care bill, but also what has happened with the TARP bill and the rescue of big banks. The common term would be corporate welfare, or corporate socialism, or corporatism (can you say, fascism?). Maybe, but you get the point. International corporations are getting their way in the world, and while until Clinton the American people where under the assumption that this system also benefited them, now it is clear that those days were simply a rehearsal for what is coming to pass now.

Once these bait and switch techniques have been refined in New Zealand, Latin America, Africa and such, they can be applied to the much more sophisticated western populations. And so, today we see Obama and the Democrats touting this health care bill as a great thing, when they can't even look at the camera with a straight face because they know that this will only drive more people into bankruptcy and destitution. Matt Taibbi has done a great job in this regard by exposing Obama and the Democrats in "Obama's Big Sellout."

This type of attitude of our political class goes also to show their hubris. The Democrats believe that working people and progressives have nowhere to turn to, and thus they are confident that no matter how bad they behave, people will eventually hold their nose and vote for them as the lesser of two evils. As Chomsky points out:

[D]emocracy is a nuisance to be ignored as long as possible, and that free enterprise means that the public pays the costs under various guises, bearing the risks if things go wrong, while profit is privatized. And in pursuit of these ends, decision-making is to be transferred as much as possible from the public arena to unaccountable private tyrannies, and "locked in" by treaties that undermine the potential threat of democracy.

AIG bailout, anyone?

This is exactly what is happening today, and while under Clinton it was still under most people's radar, and only perceptive people like Chomsky and some other few could see it, today is all done in the open, by dangling the specter of Depression in front of the American people. In the meantime, we are in a Depression; at least those of us who live in the real world. The real unemployment is probably close to 20% since the government, from Clinton onward, has been fudging the figures to the point that they are meaningless. The term jobless recovery is also something that is becoming an euphemism for the government bailing out the rich while letting everyone else hanging out to dry.

In conclusion, Chomsky's essay shows us how Clinton then and Obama now are simply new bottles for the same old wine. And if this wine tasted bitter in 1996, now it makes people want to puke. That's why people are getting mad, and throwing things at the likes of Bush and Berlusconi, or why there are clashed in Copenhagen as I write. People are sick and tired of vampire like corporations sucking them dry and they are speaking out. For this reason, while things seem to be going from bad to worse, and even though the political process is deadlocked, I see hope for the future. Not the Obama empty promise type of hope, but the hope that people are once more taking their destiny into their own hands as it happened during the Vietnam war.

On this, I'll leave the last word to Howard Zinn, who on Bill Moyers last week so eloquently said:

[T]hink for yourself. Don't believe what the people up there tell you. Live your own life. Think your own ideas. And don't depend on saviors. Don't depend on the Founding Fathers, on Andrew Jackson, on Theodore Roosevelt, on Lyndon Johnson, on Obama. Don't depend on our leaders to do what needs to be done... [P]eople should defy the rules if they think they're doing the right thing.

The Media Health Care Reform Push Back

The mainstream media is mounting a serious push against health care reform and the reasons are fairly obvious. For starters, I won't even address Fox News as the entire channel is affected by ODS or, Obama Derangement Syndrome, and it can no longer be considered part of the mainstream (if it ever was). Fox News aside, the mainstream media is simply reflecting the political leanings of their corporate owners. That's also a given.

What is interesting about this push back is that the journalists and anchors themselves are starting to weigh in on the subject. This can be seen in the type of questions they ask, the way they choose to frame the issue, the type of people they choose to interview and not interview. It's amazing to me how, for example, the single payer option, which is the most favored by the American people, is not even on the table, let alone being discussed.

What we are left with then is the so called "public option," already a compromise position which, ironically, is being framed as the liberal, extreme left position; Andrea Mitchell (right), the sleeper right winger posing as a moderate on MSNBC, just labeled it as such while commenting on President Obama's remarks this afternoon. Who would have known that those who kept repeating that the United States is a center/right country, are now the ones accusing the majority of Americans favoring the public option as extremely liberal.

The main reason why these TV personalities (the Chuck Todds and Lou Dobbses), and political pundits (the David Brookses and Pat Buchanans) are beginning to push back on health care reform is because they, with their multi million dollar contracts, are the ones who will lose when health care reform is passed. They are the people with the wasteful cadillac health care plans, the ones who might have to pay the surtax to help cover uninsured Americans, and the ones who might end up losing their cadillac plans if their employer chooses to go "public."

Next time you hear those pundits and TV personalities frame health care reform unfavorably, please remember that they are doing it for their own narrow self interest, which is the interest of the top 5% of income earners who want to maintain the status quo. Never mind that the rest of America is getting crushed by the skyrocketing cost of health care; by a system that is designed to deny care rather than provide it; by an industry whose paramount concern is, as with all for-profit industries, maximizing profit instead of helping people stay healthy.

(image source)

Give the People What They Want: Noam Chomsky on the Heathcare Hold Up

As usual, Noam Chomsky is right on the money: health care reform in America is starting to become a possibility mostly because a sector of concentrated capital is beginning to push for it. The manufacturing sector, such as GM, is getting killed by the rising cost of health care so finally, there is some interest in reforming the system on Capitol Hill.

Never mind that the vast majority of the people have been wanting a single payer health care system for decades now. A recent poll showed how 72 percent of Americans want a public option and yet, there are some Democratic senators, led by North Carolina Senator Kay Hagan, who are so in bed with the vested interests in the health care industry, that are willing to go against the will of their own voters.

The time has come to let the US Senate know where the people stand. You can find out where individual Representatives and Senators stand on health care here. Let them know that health care is a human right, not a for profit business.