Later On

Big businesses are driven by one imperative: increase profits. The public good is not a part of their mission, as it is of the government’s. Big businesses have learned now how easily they can purchase legislation that’s favorable to their mission, and block legislation that’s unfavorable, and as a result Congress has been tilted away from focusing on legislation that increases the public good: their new focus is legislation that increases business profits or at the least does not threaten those profits.

As the trend continues, with the biggest businesses now operating on a global scale and with less fealty to any one country, it could eventually change our country substantially—and I doubt for the better, since the betterment of the country was the old Congressional mission. All great nations must someday fall and fade, and perhaps we see it beginning now in the US, which already is lagging among advanced nations on a variety of important measures.

Bob Herbert takes a close look at this dynamic in his most recent column:

It’s never a contest when the interests of big business are pitted against the public interest. So if we manage to get health care “reform” this time around it will be the kind of reform that benefits the very people who have given us a failed system, and thus made reform so necessary.

Forget about a crackdown on price-gouging drug companies and predatory insurance firms. That’s not happening. With the public pretty well confused about what is going on, we’re headed — at best — toward changes that will result in a lot more people getting covered, but that will not control exploding health care costs and will leave industry leaders feeling like they’ve hit the jackpot.

The hope of a government-run insurance option is all but gone. So there will be no effective alternative for consumers in the market for health coverage, which means no competitive pressure for private insurers to rein in premiums and other charges. (Forget about the nonprofit cooperatives. That’s like sending peewee footballers up against the Super Bowl champs.)

Insurance companies are delighted with the way “reform” is unfolding. Think of it: The government is planning to require most uninsured Americans to buy health coverage. Millions of young and healthy individuals will be herded into the industry’s welcoming arms. This is the population the insurers drool over.

This additional business — a gold mine — will more than offset the cost of important new regulations that, among other things, will prevent insurers from denying coverage to applicants with pre-existing conditions or imposing lifetime limits on benefits. Poor people will …

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