Print this post.Despite its flaws, ‘I’d hold my nose and vote for reform’, intellectual tells Raw Story
By Sahil Kapur
Monday, March 22nd, 2010 [print_link]
Chomsky
He’s a hero of many progressives, but his enthusiasm for the passage of health care reform legislation this weekend was fairly muted.
In an interview with Raw Story, world-renowned scholar and political critic Noam Chomsky reluctantly called the bill a mildly positive step, but cautioned that it wouldn’t fix the fundamental problems with the nation’s troubled system.
“The United States’ health care system is so dysfunctional it has about twice the costs of comparable countries and some of the worst outcomes,” Chomsky told Raw Story. “This bill continues with that.”
The decades-long critic of corporate power alleged that premiums won’t stop rising as the package is designed in no small part to funnel money into the pockets of the health care industry. “The bill gives away a lot to insurance companies and big pharmaceutical corporations,” he said.
The legislation forbids government from negotiating prices with pharmaceutical companies or permitting the importation of drugs. Nor does it provide competition to private insurers, an oligopolistic industry that will maintain its impunity from antitrust laws. But despite this, Chomsky, an advocate for a single-payer system, said killing the bill wasn’t a better solution.
“If I were in Congress,” he said, “I’d probably hold my nose and vote for it, because the alternative of not passing it is worse, bad as this bill is. Unfortunately, that’s the reality.”
“If it fails, it wouldn’t put even limited constraints on insurance companies,” he explained, noting that the bill takes “at least has some steps towards barring the withholding of policies from people with prior disabilities.” The consumer protections from dodgy insurance practices are among the bill’s most popular components.
The mandate to purchase insurance has been a central qualm of progressives and conservatives opposed to the effort. Chomsky, while admitting it’s a boon to insurance companies, called it a “step toward universality,” asserting that “without some kind of mandatory coverage, nothing is going to work at all.”
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor added that it’s a damning referendum on American democracy that one of the most highly supported components of the effort nationally, the public insurance option, was jettisoned. He partly blamed the media for refusing to stress how favorably it’s viewed by the populace.
“It didn’t have ‘political support,’ just the support of the majority of the population,” Chomsky quipped, “which apparently is not political support in our dysfunctional democracy.”
The provision has consistently polled well, garnering the support of sixty percent of Americans across the nation in a CBS/New York Times poll released in December, days after it was eliminated from the reform package. Democratic leaders deemed it politically untenable.
“There should be headlines explaining why, for decades, what’s been called politically impossible is what most of the public has wanted,” Chomsky said. “There should be headlines explaining what that means about the political system and the media.”
Chomsky: I would have ‘held my nose’ to pass health care
2 comments
Chomsky is correct as any step forward in social laws is better than nothing. It is a telling sign however that the polls mentioned on the media pretend to indicate that the general public is against this health care reform but if this is somewhat true, then it is purely a result of the omnipresent propaganda. In any case stocks of insurance companies are slightly up and so is the stock market, which is a better indicator than the media where approval of this bill lies. The significant fact is however the insight that the passing of this bill gives into the functioning of a derelict governing body. The most important myth as taught in every high school is that of the illusionary freedom of enterprise. This is the stick with which to beat any advance in social reforms and it is liberally used by the conservatives in both parties. It implies that one has only a passing responsibility in society, that in essence we are all free to pursue health and happiness in whatever mode or circumstances we choose. Nothing is more detrimental to an organized society and it is also the reason why the control of the elites is so very strong (‘divide and rule’). In fact this freedom of enterprise is strictly enforced as a hollow rule against the populace but never applied to corporations who are sustained openly by the government, given free access to the results of publicly funded research and protected in their development with import restrictions. As long as the public keeps believing in this ‘free enterprise’ slogan, it remains locked into the will of the elites. Conservatives battle the present health bill as mandated insurance is to them bondage and in defiance of free choice to become ill and uncared for. The passing is however a give-away to the insurance world and so we see a political divide between the insurance business and the conservative attempts to scuttle this bill. Since business takes precedence over ideology we may expect a deep decline in the fortunes of the conservative party.
Free enterprise as preached is a myth for most of the population. There are few instances of acquired business successes and they are touted as examples of how one can climb up economically in this society. But unfortunately for most of the struggling citizens that remains well beyond their horizons. The best proof of it are the many different gambling casinos, the betting offices and the diverse lotto drawings, which are a wish fulfillment if not just a vain hope for treasures, not earned but suddenly descended on one. What else can one do because the game is fully stacked against most people who compete fiercely against each other, thinking that they exercise free enterprise, but either lose whatever they have gained or remain in the same spot forever. Not so for the owning classes who can indulge in free enterprise robbery of the labor of those without economic powers and who will easily engage in any kind of mischief to gain their end. They are protected by their buying power of politicians and judiciary and even law enforcement, demonstrated by such economic crimes as indulged in by Enron, the Savings and Loans and Goldman Sachs. One does well to be aware that the free enterprise system is a capitalist tool which is carefully guarded from the population at large….