Mussolini, the fascist dictator of Italy, once defined Fascism as the merger of corporate and government power. In many industries in America, that is what we currently have (e.g. the banking industry, military industrial complex, healthcare / pharmaceutical). While this dynamic has steadily eroded the quality of services for consumers and benefited the corporations, politicians continually place blame on the private sector and “capitalism”. So they further intervene into the free market in the name of protecting consumers, which ends up benefiting the corporations even more and reduces the quality of goods and services even more for consumers, and then they once again place blame on the corporations themselves and sell the American people on more government intervention, and so on and so forth.
Understanding this process, it’s sad and yet comical to watch politicians demonize particular industries on the one hand, and then turn around and pass legislation that greatly benefits the most powerful players within that industry.
C4L’s Kevin Brett recently interviewed columnist and author Tim Carney on how the health care bill empowers the drug and insurance industries, why Barack Obama is not the foe of the special interests he’s believed to be, and what effect the legislation will have on our health care down the road.
While many, especially on the right, are quick to criticize this healthcare bill, saying it brings us closer to socialized medicine (which it will), don’t think for a moment that this is a Democratic healthcare bill that the left invented with their socialistic way of thinking. This bill is actually a bill that originally came from the right, thought up by the folks at the think-tank organization the Heritage Foundation. It was a response back in the 90s to Bill Clinton’s healthcare proposals of the time that never materialized. In fact, it is the model implemented in the state of Massachusetts by Governor Mitt Romney, a republican. The healthcare industry themselves brought up this proposal again about a year ago, but now it finally got through with Obamacare. If this exact bill had come from George Bush, I bet most republicans in congress and many Americans would have supported it that didn’t this time, simply because it came from a Democrat. It’s amazing how many get caught up in partisan politics and don’t take the time to see a bill for what it truly is.
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