Corporate healthcare.. it is Payback?

[undergroundpanther]

PAYBACK FOR THE 1960'S

More evidence that social control is behind market-driven health
care comes from looking at its specific timing. Why did elite
organizations like the CED begin advocating HMOs as the first step
of their "market prescription,'' in the early 1970's? <5> That was
when America's corporate and government leaders re-evaluated the
way they would have to govern in light of the social upheavals of
the 1960's. From the time of FDR to LBJ, elite social control had
been based on policies like the New Deal and the Great Society that
were meant to convince working class Americans that corporate
leadership would give them a better and more secure future. These
policies, however, led to rising expectations and a sense of security that emboldened people to challenge authority over issues like the Vietnam War, Civil Rights, conditions of work, and welfare. In other words, the elite strategy of improving social conditions as a means of controlling people back-fired.

How profoundly the 1960's affected the thinking of elite leadership
can be seen in the writing of Samuel P. Huntington, Professor of
Government and Director of the Center For International Affairs at
Harvard University, and co-author of The Crisis of Democracy: Report
on the Governability of Democracies to the Trilateral Commission
written in 1975. <8> Huntington's Report noted that, "The essence
of the democratic surge of the 1960s was a general challenge to
existing systems of authority, public and private,"<9> marked by a
"sharp increase in political consciousness, political participation,
and commitment to egalitarian and democratic values." <10> What
especially frightened the elite was the fact that, as Huntington
wrote, "In recent years, the operations of the democratic process
do indeed appear to have generated a breakdown of traditional means
of social control, a de-legitimation of political and other forms
of authority... The late sixties have been a major turning point."<11> The Report concluded: "Al Smith once remarked that 'the only cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.' Our analysis suggests that applying that cure at the present time could well be adding fuel to the flames. Instead, some of the problems of governance in the United States stem from an excess of democracy... Needed, instead, is a greater degree of moderation of democracy." <12>

Corporate leaders abandoned the old method of social control embodied in the New Deal and the Great Society and began relying instead on a fundamentally different, "get tough," strategy designed to strengthen corporate power over people by making them less secure. This new strategy motivates corporate leaders' new enthusiasm for the "discipline" of the free market, which they use to justify not only market-driven health care but downsizing and attacks on the social safety net.

Market-driven health care is part of a pattern of government and
corporate policy initiatives over the last several decades which
have one thing in common: they strengthen corporate power over
people by lowering people's expectations in life, and by reducing
their economic, social, and emotional security. These policies
include corporate downsizing and the "temping" of jobs; the elimination of the "family wage," so that now both parents have to work full-time and have less time with their children; drastic cuts in the social safety net of welfare and related assistance; the introduction of pension plans based on individualized investments that leave each older person to his or her own fate; and the use of high stakes tests in public elementary and secondary schools to subject children to the same stress and insecurity that their parents face on the job. In the workplace, employers have adopted anti-worker tactics that had not been used since the early 1930s, most notably firing striking workers and hiring permanent replacements, as President Reagan did during the air traffic controllers' strike. All these policies put people on the defensive and pressure them to worry more about personal survival than working together for social change.
http://www.math.missouri.edu/~rich/MGM/corp_agenda.txt

[Erika]

1. Exactly - Lower expectations while telling us we're #1

in benefits. It will work if we don't scream long and hard.

A question, how many could afford the health care Reagan had? Only the rich could.

[KT2000]

2. I think you're right

One aspect of the market-driven health-care plan is that is took power away from doctors. They were and are second-guessed by office clerks who have no medical training.

This article by Malcolm Gladwell further describes how patients are now viewed in this system - as low-lifes.

http://www.malcolmgladwell.com/2005/2005_08_29_a_hazard.html