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On February 28, 2010 on CNN’s State of the Union, Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the US House of Representatives, said that the health insurance companies didn’t want a government-financed and operated insurance option for American citizens so it was off the table.  Her statement reminds me of the earlier one by Richard Durbin of the US Senate, who remarked after his forclosure-assistance amendment failed that the banking lobby owns Congress.   Would there have been the hyperbole of “socialism!” associated with the public option for health insurance were that proposal in the interest of the industry at issue (i.e., at fault)?  If so, it is interesting in a sad sort of way that a culpable person would have the gall to use exaggeration (there would still be private insurance so the sector would not be socialist…meaning owned and controlled by the state).  We have seen the same thing from the banking lobby in fighting reform efforts in the wake of the financial crisis of September, 2008.   In other words, we can isolate a pattern here: even when companies (or an industry) are at fault, they can still own Congress when their interests are at stake.

It is particularly disconcerting to me that so many citizens fall for the self-interested exaggerations when it would be more natural for people to be angry at the culpable people for continuing their unethical business practices (and going on to stop reform that is at least in part due to their bad practices).  Take for example, Representative Dennis Cardoza, Democrat of California in the US House. The husband of a family practice doctor, he is intimately familiar with the failings of the American health care system. His wife “comes home every night,” he said, “angry and frustrated at insurance companies denying people coverage they have paid for.” Even so, he is on the fence on the Democratic health-care reform proposal because he wants stronger anti-abortion language and more cost control.  Were he really angry like his wife, he would be pushing not only for the bill, but for the public option or for real restrictions on the insurance companies, rather than allowing secondary issues to block him.  In other words, I don’t believe he is really that angry at the companies refusing to fuffill their responsibilities to their customers who have paid the premiums.  Also, he is allowing himself to succumb to the self-interested manipulation of the same firms that he is ostensively angry at.  It is in the health insurance companies interest that costs be reduced because then their expenses are reduced (and their profits, which were very high in 2009…even as they were denying treatment to some).  If he were really angry like his wife, he would not be so willing to do something that would benefit them so much; rather, he would be working to take power and money away from them.

Unfortunately, the problem kids are able to thwart our efforts to clean up after them.  America’s Health Insurance Plans, a lobby for insurers, announced in March, 2010 (as Congress was considering health-insurance reform) that it was buying more than a million dollars’ worth of television advertising time to explain why insurance premiums had been rising. The week before, the White House had indicated that the industry’s rationale for the raised premiums was unconvincing.  Too many of us are letting industries get away with their mis-representations geared to thwart reform.   The health insurance industry’s ads convince us that the companies really aren’t sharks; we ignore Sen. Rockefeller’s likening of the companies to sharks—you don’t know there is a shark until you see its fin and feel its sharp teeth.  In other words, our anger is too easily (and conveniently…for the sharks, which want to continue feeding) dissipated.  We let the bad kids off the hook and go on as if the problem were somehow no longer out there.  This puts the misbehaving kids in a position to thwart any parenting.   In short, too many of us are unwittingly being manipulated by the bullies (who are therefore getting away with murder).   I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that spoiled  kids would not feel culpable for their own bad behavior, but I am.  I am perhaps even more disappointed in the parents (i.e., the American people) who let themselves be manipulated by such kids.  It is like watching the parent of an alcoholic teenager be in denial and thereby enable the kid to continue drinking even though the kid beats up other kids when he or she drinks.  “Oh, Tommy didn’t mean it; he is really a good kid.  I don’t think we need to look at a group home or jail. He will be good if he can relax with a beer.  Here Tommy…” 

Whether in dealing with the people at the health insurance companies who are in denial or the representatives and their supporters among the public who are also in denial and are enabling them, it is an exercise in futility and utter frustration to see this dynamic and want to shape it up because the sickness has strong defense mechanisms against real change.  So I ask: can a dysfunctional system be fixed?  Can it fix itself?  Probably not.  So are there enough people in the US outside of the dysfunction who could fix it above the screams of the sick who do not want the shot?   Imagine a physician acquiescing to a kid’s demand that the shot not be given.  In a physcian’s office, the sick kid does not get to decide—or to put it another way, there are enough adults in the room that the shot is given over the kid’s objections.  So where are the adults?

Sources: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35628488/ns/politics-the_new_york_times/ ; http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/10/health/policy/10health.html?ref=us