Freedom Rider: The Peace Prize War
By Margaret Kimberley, BAR editor and senior columnist
Dateline: 12/01/2009 [print_link]
Afghan children: More death, destruction and disturbances are on the way.
“It is now official. War is peace if you market it well enough.”
As Barack Obama prepares to accept the Nobel Prize for Peace, he is also preparing to escalate war. He and the system he so loyally represents have little else to offer Americans or the rest of the world. Just in case there is anyone who didn’t get the memo, the announcement came straight from West Point. Obama is outdoing his predecessor George W. Bush by using soldiers and military installations as photo opportunity backdrops. The message is clear. There is no commitment to do anything else but keep the war machine humming.
While most Americans focus on the latest marketing extravaganza executed by team Obama, nations in the rest of the world do as much as they can to fight imperialism. The useless corporate media inspire handwringing over Iran’s decision to build more nuclear enrichment facilities, but the more important news about Iran is ignored. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made official visits [1] to Brazil, Bolivia and Venezuela to strengthen trade agreements with those nations, and to talk about ending the supremacy of the dollar [2].
Barack Obama didn’t like it very much, but no one in these countries seemed to care about the Nobel laureate’s two cents worth of opinion. He sent a letter to Brazilian president Lula, admonishing him for welcoming Ahmadinejad. In case Obama didn’t get this memo, Ahmadinejad is not a pariah everywhere on earth, no matter how much American press and politicians fume and fuss. No one cared about what the president wanted and Ahmadinejad’s itinerary remained unchanged.
“In case Obama didn’t get this memo, Ahmadinejad is not a pariah everywhere on earth.”
These nations that are seldom noticed are playing a larger role in world affairs than the average American could possibly imagine. Venezuela, Brazil and Bolivia are not sticking their fingers in America’s eye merely out of spite. They want to be free of “dollar hegemony” and they are backing up their words with action. They have in fact begun using their own currency in an effort to escape American control of their destinies.
While Americans giddily applaud the latest Team Obama marketing extravaganza, the world takes its cues less and less from Uncle Sam. We in the U.S. are left in a state of disinformation so complete that we rarely know what the rest of the world is doing. Americans fail to understand that when most other nations think about our country, it is about ways to escape from its clutches.
Military prowess seems to be the only power the United States has left. It apparently has no ability to help its own people. One in four homeowners are “underwater” on their mortgages, owing more to the bank than their homes are worth. The Obama administration has done nothing about this human and economic catastrophe. One in eight Americans receive food stamps, a staggering 49 million people in need of some assistance to keep food on the table. The record number of bank failures, the precarious state of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the lack of health care for millions are likewise left unaddressed. War is always on the table and is never rejected.
“When most other nations think about our country, it is about ways to escape from its clutches.”
Obama is George W. Bush with a higher IQ and a better vocabulary. He knows just what words to use in order to get away with murder. The war effort will not be open ended: we are fighting terrorism, we will help the Afghan people and so on. Just a few thousand more civilian deaths and then Johnny can come marching home again.
It is easier to like the imperialist who speaks well. Obama has snob appeal and that is enough reason for millions of people who should know better to give him a pass, even as he asserts the right to keep killing human beings.
If Barack Obama is not greeted by protesters in Oslo then the world is indeed in a very bad place. It is now official. War is peace if you market it well enough. The marketing creation that is Obama can get away with murder or just about anything else.
The peace prize committee should stick to honoring dissidents living under house arrest. It is difficult to fathom how the man in charge of a military budget larger than that of the rest of the world combined can get a prize for peace making. Perhaps the committee can take the prize back. It would be a controversial and difficult thing to do, but no worse than sullying their formerly good names with a bizarre and shameful decision they will surely regret.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Margaret.Kimberley@BlackAgendaReport.com.
Source URL: http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/freedom-rider-peace-prize-war
Links:
[1] http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/KK26Ak02.html
[2] http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20091125/wl_afp/venezuelairandiplomacyus
Health care’s historic flop
Simulpost: CounterPunch.org
Dateline: November 23, 2009 [print_link]
The Democrats’ “healthcare reform” plan is the greatest swindle in memory—a political Ponzi scheme comparable to Madoff’s in sheer audacity. Despite this rather obvious fact, leading liberals, including most prominent grassroots mobilization organizations like MOVEON.ORG, Health Care for America Now, Organizing for America, etc., are frantically trying to assist in the passing of this fraud. Equally disgusting, many media figures and publications—from Keith Olbermann (who should know better) to The Nation magazine, and the Daily Kos—are similarly engaged in this dubious effort.
By HELEN REDMOND
Ignani before her bought pals in Congress. How does this woman—of working class origin—get through the night?
I get weekly emails from Levana Layendecker of Health Care for America Now (HCAN) and Mitch Stewart from Organizing for America. In increasingly shrill prose, the two try to convince me to support whatever legislation emerges from Congress. They warn, “IF THE INSURANCE COMPANIES WIN, YOU LOSE.” I agree completely. That is why I won’t support any legislation Congress passes because the insurance companies have already won and we have lost.
We need only look at the check lists of two of the most powerful people in health care reform to see who is benefiting most from the proposed legislation in Congress.
Karen “Killer” Ignagni,** President and CEO of America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) won the following:
*Still in business making billions of profits for Wall Street investors and CEO’s of insurance companies
*No cost controls that would decrease profits
*Mandate giving us at least 30 million new customers and fined if they don’t buy coverage
*Still able to deny doctor recommended care
*Still able to increase premiums
*Kill or weaken public option
*Investment in 3000 lobbyists and 1.4 million a day paid off
Then there is [former Congressman] Billy “The Kid” Tauzin, President and CEO of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA.) He was able to check off everything on his list:
* Get a meeting with President Obama behind closed doors and make a deal to protect PhRMA profits
*No drug reimportation from Canada or Mexico
*Extend protections for lucrative biologic drugs
*No negotiating drug prices for Medicare Part D
*U.S. drug market continues to be the most profitable
There was even a big, last minute win for the misogynist Catholic Bishops. For thirty years these disgusting, sexist servants of God have fought to restrict access to abortion. Thanks to the betrayal of Nancy Pelosi and Jan Schakowski, the “ardent” defenders of women’s reproductive rights, the no-choice Stupak Amendment passed. The Democrats position on abortion is “safe, legal and rare” and the Stupak Amendment will make abortion rarer still.
The xenophobes and racists won, too. Millions of undocumented human beings from every corner of the globe who work and pay taxes in the United States are ineligible for Medicaid and subsidies. The message: don’t get sick, but if you do, die quickly and if you don’t, we’ll deport you.
The insurance industry concocted a strategy well in advance of Obama taking office. The crisis they caused could no longer be ignored: 50 million uninsured, millions of medical bankruptcies, employers screaming about rate increases and dropping coverage in record numbers and thousands of health care horror stories in the media. According to Wendell Potter, the former Vice President of Public Relations at Cigna, now a whistleblower, “They [the insurers] knew they had a very big public relations problem, and they knew this day was coming. They knew they had to be perceived as coming to the table with solutions. It was a departure from their previous point of view. But they knew they would be slaughtered if it weren’t.”
And there they were, just as Potter predicted – the Killer and the Kid, not only at the table, but at all the secret, behind closed-door meetings with the late Ted Kennedy and Max Baucus. Ignagni proclaimed, “We want to play. We want to contribute. We want to help pass health reform legislation this year.” And what a player she is. In an article titled, “Insurers poised to reap benefits from healthcare overhaul” Mark Merritt, a lobbyist, keenly observed, “While so many in this town have been playing checkers, Karen has been playing chess.” Checkmate for AHIP.
Senator Baucus has taken more money from the health and insurance industry than any other member of Congress. Elizabeth Fowler, Baucus’s chief health advisor, is a former VP of public policy for the insurance giant Wellpoint. She “helped” write the Senate bill.
AHIP uses lobbyists and campaign contributions to shape legislation, not to kill or oppose it as HCAN and Organizing for America constantly claim. That’s what the 3000 lobbyists are doing every day in Congress – inserting industry friendly, arcane language and loopholes into unfathomable (except to industry lawyers and actuaries) 2000 page bills which the Democrats support. To be sure, insurers don’t like the public option but it’s so not robust, so eviscerated, so devoid of honesty keeping mechanisms it poses no competition or threat to profits as most political commentators now admit. Similarly, Ignagni wants tougher financial penalties for those who don’t purchase health insurance but it’s not a deal breaker, nor is accepting all patients regardless of health status. The industry has already announced premium increases and the added revenue will underwrite health care for those with “pre-existing” conditions.
It’s obvious. THE INSURANCE INDUSTRY IS WINNING AND WE ARE LOSING. There is an inconvenient contradiction that both HCAN and Organizing for America attempt to obscure: President Obama and Congressional leaders are working hand in glove with the very corporate criminals both organizations excoriate. AHIP and PhRMA have unfettered access to politicians and a massive influence on health care legislation. Why? Because the Democratic Party, despite its populist image, is a party of big business, of capitalism, not a party of the people. Notwithstanding the occasional howl about “insurance industry abuses” (to hoodwink us into thinking they are curbing those abuses) current legislation entrenches the industry even further into the core of the health care system and is on the brink of handing them unprecedented billions in taxpayer money and a mandate. This is dangerous not only to our health, but to democracy. Once the spigot to billions in public money is open, the industry will oppose attempts to shut it off. The money will flow back into American politics as campaign donations and kickbacks to happy-to-help, pro-industry politicians of which there are no shortage on either side of the aisle.
THE INSURANCE INDUSTRY IS WINNING AND WE ARE LOSING and anyone who follows the money knows it. Except Levana and Mitch.
The organizations the two represent are the major purveyors of outright lies, lies of omission and half-truths about health care legislation by asserting the following: health insurance will get better, stable and more secure; health insurance will get cheaper; employers will have to offer good, affordable insurance and not shift additional costs onto you; if you lose your job you will always be able to afford insurance, and expenses will be capped. They assert Medicaid and Medicare benefits won’t be cut.
Here’s an inconvenient, honest-to-god truth: the legislation does nothing to solve the health care crisis. It’s estimated up to twenty million people will still be uninsured. There are no effective cost containment mechanisms in either bill because that would reduce profits. There are no controls on the price of premiums and the House bill permits charging twice as much for older people as for younger ones. More profits. Insurers can continue to deny physician recommended medical care and patient claims. Medical-loss ratio in favor of insurers, million dollar salaries for CEO’s and Wall Street investors untouched.
The caps on out-of-pocket expenses are $5000 for individuals and $10,000 for families. These amounts result in medical bankruptcy now. Employers must pay 72.5 percent of premiums for individuals and 65 percent for families. That gives companies who currently pay a higher percentage an incentive to shift costs onto employees then dump them into the insurance exchange because it will be cheaper. The plans in the exchange will be high deductible, stripped down, tiered plans much like the ones available through the Commonwealth Connecter in Massachusetts. There will be an expansion of Medicaid but the history of the program reveals that just as it expands, it contracts. Eligibility criteria and reimbursement rates for Medicaid change with the fiscal fortunes of the states and federal government. It is truly stunning that health care reform will be paid for with billions in “savings” from the health care program for the elderly; Medicare. Why not use “savings” from the bloated 700 billion dollar military budget? The talk about fraud and waste in the Medicare program is a cover to cut benefits and seniors are right to be angry and mistrustful.
Levana and Mitch are playing chess, too. Their deceit is insidious and not without precedence. HCAN and Organizing for America are following in the footsteps of organizations that are created every time health care reform is attempted. They promote incremental changes to the system and the legislation urgently (health reform can’t wait!) and passionately promoted is not designed to solve the crisis, but rather to guarantee the continued existence and profit-making power of the insurance industry. Moreover, their job is to tamp down expectations for fundamental change, like single-payer, and convince the public the legislation, although not perfect, is the best we can get. It’s still “change we can believe in.”
Any bill that passes will be hailed as historic. It will be historic: historic in the sense that it’s yet another sellout in a long history of sellouts of the American people – bankrupt and broken, still desperate and dying for reform that makes health care a human right and where profit has no place.
Helen Redmond, LCSW, is a medical social worker in Chicago.
**
MOTHER JONES put forth the following question:
What kind of health care coverage does the nation’s top health insurance lobbyist have? Her trade group refuses to say.
Karen Ignagni is the health insurance industry’s main defender in Washington. As the president and CEO of America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), the industry’s lobby, she represents all the big insurance companies: WellPoint, Aetna, UnitedHealth, and CIGNA, among others. As such, she’s one of the leading opponents of the so-called public option—a [ridiculously weakened] proposed government-run health care plan that would [theoretically] compete with private plans as a way of lowering costs. AHIP recently organized 50,000 insurance company employees to fan out to congressional town hall meetings to fight the public option, which the industry views as a major threat to its bottom line. They recognize that without having to pay enormous executive salaries or hire corporate jets, the government-run plan might be cheap enough to steal away a big chunk of their business.
AARP: Reform advocate and insurance salesman
The “nonprofit” AARP has long played both sides of the street, and often acted as a stealth partner of private insurers.
Seniors group makes millions from royalties on health plans
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer // Dateline: Tuesday, October 27, 2009 [print_link]
"Weak Reid" holding forth on health care. The AARP has published numerous features on the healthcare reform debate, but its position remains almost a carbon-copy of the non-single payer Obama approach, and hence useless to the nation. The organization is far more about business than protecting the interests of its members. In fact, since AARP makes the bulk of its money from selling "supplemental plans" to cover the gaps in Medicare and other insurance programs, it has a pronounced interest in seeing the continuance of a leaky and grossly inadequate system. If this is not a huge conflict of interest, we don't know what is.
The nation’s preeminent seniors group, AARP, has put the weight of its 40 million members behind health-care reform, saying many of the proposals will lower costs and increase the quality of care for older Americans.
But not advertised in this lobbying campaign have been the group’s substantial earnings from insurance royalties and the potential benefits that could come its way from many of the reform proposals.
The group and its subsidiaries collected more than $650 million in royalties and other fees last year from the sale of insurance policies, credit cards and other products that carry the AARP name, accounting for the majority of its $1.14 billion in revenue, according to federal tax records. It does not directly sell insurance policies but lends its name to plans in exchange for a tax-exempt cut of the premiums.
The organization, formerly known as the American Association of Retired Persons, also heavily markets the policies on its Web site, in mailings to its members and through ubiquitous advertising targeted at seniors.
The group’s dual role as an insurance reformer and a broker has come under increasing scrutiny in recent weeks from congressional Republicans, who accuse it of having a conflict of interest in taking sides in the fierce debate over health insurance. Three House Republicans sent a letter to AARP on Monday complaining that the group was putting its “political self-interests” ahead of seniors.
GOP lawmakers point to AARP’s thriving business in marketing branded Medigap policies, which provide supplemental coverage for standard Medicare plans available to the elderly. Democratic proposals to slash reimbursements for another program, called Medicare Advantage, are widely expected to drive up demand for private Medigap policies like the ones offered by AARP, according to health-care experts, legislative aides and documents.
Republicans also question the high salaries and other perks given to some top AARP executives, who would not be subject to limits on insurance executives’ pay included in the Senate Finance Committee’s health reform package. Former AARP chief executive William Novelli received more than $1 million in compensation last year.
“We are witnessing a disturbing trend of handouts to special interests like AARP,” said House Republican spokesman Matt Lloyd, referring to Democratic negotiations over health reform. “In return, AARP is lobbying for a government-run health-care bill that will pad their own executives’ pockets at the expense of its own members and other vulnerable seniors.”
AARP officials strongly dispute such allegations, arguing that the group’s heavy reliance on brand royalties allows it to offer members a wide range of benefits — from lobbying for seniors in Washington to discount travel packages and financial advice. The organization notes that even though it offers a Medicare Advantage plan, it has long advocated curbing waste in that federal program.
“We’re a consumer advocacy organization; we’re not an insurance firm,” said David Certner, AARP’s director of legislative policy. “That drives everything we do. It’s got to be good for our members, or we don’t endorse it.”
Added AARP spokesman Jim Dau: “We spend far more time at odds with private insurers than not.”
AARP’s ties to the insurance business date to its founding by former educator Ethel Percy Andrus, who started a group to help retired schoolteachers find health insurance in the years before Medicare; the effort led to the creation of AARP in 1958.
Now, the group relies more than ever on payments from auto, health and life insurers, according to financial statements. From 2007 to 2008, AARP royalties from insurance plans, credit cards and other branded products shot up 31 percent — from less than $500 million to $652 million — making such fees the primary source of revenue for the group last year, the records show. AARP’s annual financial report shows that 63 percent of that, or about $400 million, came from the nation’s largest health insurance carrier, UnitedHealth Group, which underwrites four major AARP Medigap policies. Other carriers with AARP-branded plans include Aetna Life Insurance, Genworth Life Insurance and Delta Dental.
AARP is also a major powerhouse in Washington, spending more than $37 million on lobbying since January 2008. The organization’s close ties with insurers have long attracted criticism from politicians of both parties.
During the health-care debate of the early 1990s, then-Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.) held hearings lambasting the group’s business operations. Some Democrats criticized the group for supporting the Bush administration’s expensive Medicare prescription-drug legislation in 2003.
Earlier this year, AARP and UnitedHealth said they were halting the sale of “limited benefit” health insurance policies after complaints from Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) that the plans were marketed in a misleading way.
Dean A. Zerbe, a former Grassley senior counsel who is now national managing director at the corporate tax firm Alliant Group, argues that AARP’s involvement in the sale of insurance plans “really hurts their credibility.”
“Either you’re a voice for the elderly or you’re an insurance company; choose one,” Zerbe said. “They put themselves forward in the public arena as nonbiased observers, but they’re very swayed by business interests.”
Republicans renewed their attacks on AARP this year after the group emerged as a vigorous defender of many of the reforms under consideration by the Democrat-controlled Congress. Nancy LeaMond, an AARP executive vice president, appeared at a press conference Friday alongside House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to announce a new proposal for plugging gaps in coverage of Medicare prescription benefits.
Rep. Dave Reichert (R-Wash.), who has asked AARP to provide him with more details about its insurance-related businesses, said he believes the group is “misleading” its members about the alleged benefits of Democratic reforms. “Right now there’s a feeling among seniors that AARP may not be entirely forthcoming,” he said.
AARP launched a “fact check” section on its Web site this year to counter GOP criticisms of reform, including the discredited “death panels” claim, and argues that wringing savings out of Medicare and closing gaps in prescription coverage will help older Americans.
Several top AARP officials also said they have no idea whether the group might gain insurance business as a result of the proposed reforms. “We wouldn’t know it, and we wouldn’t really care,” Certner said. “The advocacy is what drives what we do here, and not the other way around.”