Capitalist Socialized Medicine in Massachussets

The drug/doctor/government complex is a powerful force. The AMA, the American Medical Association, is an effective labor union started some time ago by a con-man parading as a doctor. The second president, was also a non-doctor con-man, so you have an idea about the money culture at the AMA.

The AMA has been effective at nearly destroying homeopathic, chiropractic, and osteopathic practice through control of politicians who write "doctors," which has come to mean allopathic practitioners, into various funding streams.

The average person now equates the MD with "doctor." The AMA has won the health wars, as did teacher unions, and the losers are the people. If you think MDs are, in fact, the true arbiters of health, recall the long-lived British Royal Family is attended to by homeopathic doctors.

The drug industry, as one of my recent blogs shows, is the most profitable one in the U.S. with a return on investment of about 22%, a tad under 3 times that of the maligned oil industry.

Things are about to go from bad to worse as the government supported monopoly is no longer feeling restrained. I could go on forever about this, say discuss the Codex Alimentarius that Congress is looking at - a UN and WHO project to remove all food supplements from the shelves and make them "drugs." In this way, all those billions of dollars the drug companies can be reclaimed. This is a brilliant move, for example - Vitamin C is the only widespread available treatment for avian flu. Can't permit that treatment to be freely available.

Rather than rant at the multi-front assault on us by Big Pharma, let me just focus on a new variation of socialized medicine - forced insurance. Now, the insurance companies are in on the money grab, which makes the new system acceptable to Republicans.

Mitt Romney is supposed to be a Republican, maybe so, but he is not against forced income distribution to big business. Coming July 1, Mass residents are required to have medical insurance if they earn more than $15,000 per year. The plan seems to limit the required contribution, however, to 10 percent of your income.

The control point of this bizarre system is the creation of a new bureaucracy which will monitor citizens state income tax and data mine to see who the evil-doers are, those who are not insured. Personal, private information will now make the rounds as new agents hunt you down.

There are two ways to look at this new law: means analysis and ends analysis. Big Brother always seduces us by offering a great end, if only we accept their means of doing it. The article below goes into some detail about how Big Brother is gearing up to data mine its "bad actors" who illegally have decided not insure themselves. You will also get a feel for the chaos the structure will foster.

I suppose my main objection is that socialists never admit to what they are doing. They always create some mumbo jumbo to cover their efforts to control everyone by a central machine. Unlike in Europe, they dissemble; they know if they were honest, here, there is no chance people would accept the failed system.

In the case of forced medical insurance, the socialists have hooked big business who could care less about larger issues, apparently, as they will get their taste. For now, anyway.

Government Begins to Enforce Conventional (Allopathic) Medicine Mandates on Americans

[Author Peter Barry Chowka's web site - click on main title]

The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.

– Minority Report: H. L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956) p. 247

(April 15, 2007) The concept of “universal health care,” reportedly so popular with the American electorate now, may at first glance sound appealing...

As usual, however, there are prices to be paid for such a Faustian bargain, with the uncontrolled financial costs and other downsides rarely if ever made apparent, or admitted, at the onset of a new government program.

Among the indirect costs are the emerging plans to set up huge new government databases (tapping into and mining private commercial databases) and large new bureaucracies to “track down” and enforce compliance on residents who fail to buy approved medical coverage.

...In 2007, plans are moving forward in a number of states to force all residents, not just the elderly – under the threat of law – to participate in the conventional medical monopoly. (Meanwhile, all Democrat candidates for the 2008 presidential nomination have pledged to support government run universal health care.)

Such a plan is already in effect in Massachusetts. On July 1, 2007, as the result of a law passed in 2006, all Massachusetts residents will need to prove that they have state-approved conventional medical insurance. The cost of such coverage for an individual can be as high as $9,000 a year, and even more for families. None of the state-approved insurance plans covers alternative or CAM (complementary alternative medicine) modalities (with the possible exception of chiropractic) and, in addition, the more “affordable” ones have deductibles and co-payments, further burdening the alt med-favoring resident with large expenditures irrelevant to his life.

In California, the nation's largest state, where both the Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and the Democrat-controlled legislature have proposed universal coverage, draconian schemes to enforce the proposed universal health care mandates have emerged.

“The Schwarzenegger administration considers putting teeth in its plan to require coverage for all,” reported the Los Angeles Times (April 11, 2007). “People who refuse to obtain health insurance could be tracked down by the state or a private contractor, enrolled in a plan and fined until they pay their premiums” [emphasis added]. Schwarzenegger has also proposed attaching the wages of people who don't buy health insurance and increasing the amount that uninsured people owe in state income taxes. [Quite a problem as a vast number of people are illegal aliens who are off the computers.]

Quoting the Times: “The proposal to locate people without insurance would use state or private databases and target those who lacked coverage for 60 days or more.”

Peter Harbage, a senior program associate with the New America Foundation (according to the Times “Schwarzenegger has cited the foundation's research in helping to frame his plan”), commented “you're going to have some people who are bad actors, and that's where you need some sort of tracking system.” [emphasis added]

The Times reports, “The governor said he is studying as a possible model a new system the state Department of Motor Vehicles is using to locate drivers who lack automobile insurance. Another model, he [because of the confusing way the article is written or edited, it's not clear if the Times here refers to Harbage or Schwarzenegger] said, is the one the state uses to track down people who don't pay child support.

“'There's no easy way to come up with a tracking model,'” he [Harbage? Schwarzenegger?] said. 'It's going to take some thought and it's going to be complex.'”

In Massachusetts, according to the state government, “Beginning July 1, 2007, all Massachusetts residents 18 years of age and over are required to carry the minimum level of health insurance. . . Enforcement will be accomplished through an individual’s state tax return. Financial penalties will be imposed on uninsured individuals up to 50 percent of the cost of a health insurance plan” – a plan, that is, that will be chosen for the uninsured individual by state bureaucrats.

According to the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons' May 2006 newsletter, “All [Massachusetts] residents would have to indicate on their state income tax returns, under oath, whether they had creditable coverage for the entire 12 months. If they say they didn't, or if the commissioner determines that they actually didn't, any tax refund would be withheld, and if that is insufficient, all available enforcement procedures will be used to collect.”

Twila Brase, president of the Citizens' Council on Healthcare (CCHC), commented on April 10, 2006 “If Governor Romney signs this bill into law [which he did on April 12, 2006], a huge health care bureaucracy will descend on the people of Massachusetts. . . an intrusive and prescriptive bureaucracy will be authorized to ration health care and make decisions about who gets what health care when. Health care decisions will be taken out of the hands of patients and doctors as the agendas of special interests, not the needs of patients, take precedence. The legislation is extremely intrusive. State agencies will be monitoring insurance status, checking income status, and tracking the medical care of the Massachusetts people.” The CCHC published a six-page PDF, “Massachusetts 'Universal Coverage' Legislation Mimics Government Bureaucracy and Bureaucratic Controls of 'HillaryCare.'”

In the April 2006 issue of Health Freedom Watch, founder and president of the Institute for Health Freedom Sue A. Blevins writes, “It's crystal clear (upon reading the actual [Massachusetts] bill text) that the plan invades everyone's privacy by requiring insurers and health-care providers to submit patient data to a centralized clearinghouse (a new council). And it's clear that forcing Americans to buy a product from a limited number of government-approved insurers limits their freedom of choice.

“There is a huge difference between freedom and choice: freedom means one is free to choose from an array of options not artificially limited by the government, while choice may include only an artificially limited number of options.”

A search of the 145-page universal health care bill signed by Romney on April 12, 2006 reveals that the words “chiropractic,” “acupuncture,” and “naturopath” do not appear in the text.

Not to be outdone by neighboring Massachusetts, Democrat politicians in Connecticut recently proposed their own state government health care plans. One of them, SB 1371, the Connecticut Saves Health Care Program, would have established a single payer plan. The bill was passed by the legislature's insurance committee by a vote of 12-7 in March. On April 10, however, the Hartford Courant reported that “the legislature's nonpartisan Office of Fiscal Analysis estimated the costs at $11.8 billion to $17.7 billion a year, depending on variables.” The Courant added, “The cost is slightly more than the entire state budget proposed by the governor.”...

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ALSO recommended: “Superhighway to Dystopia”

© by Simon Davies

[In the past] most writers warned that. . . computers would vastly increase the power of governments and corporations. The individual would be diminished and made to be an insignificant cog with limited independence. Privacy would be decimated as the State intruded into more and more areas of private life. Ultimately, because information is power, democracy itself would be weakened.

This speculation seeped into the public consciousness. A 1971 national opinion poll in Britain revealed that the fear of a Big Brother state was the number one public concern. In the US, Canada and Australia, a similar expression of fear began to emerge. . .

Although Big Brother might not be the threat we imagined, something far more sinister has taken his place: complacency. Technology has spawned an age of mass pacification.

The Big Brother society imagined by the world in 1970 depended on coercion and fear. The society we are developing now is more like Huxley than Orwell. It is Brave New World. Instead of the repressive tyrants and their omnipresent, brutal and intrusive technology, the public is being brought to heel by a lethal expectation of compliance. Big Brother entailed conflict. Instead, ours is becoming a society based on Harmony Ideology. Technology is our friend – our partner. Compliance and agreement are the natural order. We have, after all, become components of a new order based on the surrender of information. And it is not just governments who are to blame. The division between private and public organisations is fast disappearing, as both spheres increasingly reach accord. Public interest and privacy bodies become more ineffectual by the day as pragmatic solutions are struck in the back room by the key players. There is no disquiet over these trends, and little discussion. That is the greatest danger of all.

The history of this state of affairs is fascinating. Ten years ago, a series of events began which silently changed the course of human history. One by one, governments and corporations across the world started to reach agreement on ways to link the information contained in their computers. Isolated, cumbersome machines progressively became part of a giant web of information touching every aspect of our lives. A Global Information Infrastructure – potentially the greatest force since the birth of the automobile – is being forged. And hardly a dog is barking.

Mass surveillance is developing through a vast range of computer based information systems. Most are designed to improve efficiency, to maximise revenue, or to serve law enforcement and national security. The systems, increasingly, are linked, so that information is shared throughout the government and the private sector. The justification is seductive, and difficult to oppose. The danger in this justification is that it knows no bounds.

Within a decade most countries will have a voluntary ID card, a national DNA database, a national grid of CCTV surveillance, mass data matching between computers, and an astonishing web of computer networks linked to an international information linkage. Presently, the interests of the individual are hardly in sight.

Law has failed entirely to stem this breach to our privacy. Privacy law in every country is little more than a means of legitimising intrusion, and mandating the orderly establishment of surveillance systems. Nothing more, nothing less. . .

It's no longer fashionable amongst intelligent folk to admit being scared or even concerned about computers. Smart people embrace technology. The most drab and unimaginative politicians are advised to climb aboard the Superhighway, and get hep about new technology. Cabinet Ministers without the guts or perspicacity to deal squarely with the policy challenges in their own domain, publicly embrace computers and smart cards as a Great Solution. Young people, mesmerised by the magic of computers, fail to see the universe that lies behind the screen. But some people still feel the old nightmare as if it were forgotten wisdom from another age. Beyond the slick technology, there is an emerging Big Picture, and it is not an entirely pleasant one. . .

Planetary management involves some radical changes to the way things have always been done. No event or decision can be made in isolation. Those days have gone. Our society is becoming tuned into consensus, compromise, agreement and conformity. . .

The information revolution has three goals in mind. The first is to create maximum efficiency within each information system. The second is convergence: the achievement of perfect compatibility and communication between computers. The third goal is to create perfect and total identification of human subjects. In its quest to achieve these aims, the computer industry must bring about a subtle but profound change to the human spirit and to our way of life. . .

The most important development in computers is not their size, speed or prevalence, but the phenomenon that most of them are converging to form one mass – a sort of seamless technological web. This web is important for the organisations controlling the information systems. It will mean that computers will talk easily to one another, and it will ensure that all people are constantly visible.

Now that the bleak Orwellian image of computers has been softened and re-designed in gentle pastels, the awe and pessimism have almost disappeared. The harsh edges of technology have been smoothed; the whole concept has been made user-friendly. All around there is an air of acceptance. Slowly, however, we are being fused with the technology. And, as we become fused with the technology, human identity becomes less distinct. . .

The architects of modern computer systems have successfully argued their technology can solve the ancient curses of social dysfunction and administrative expense. Bureaucracy, they claim can be made more efficient through the automated management of information.

Society can be made safer. Economies can run more smoothly, and education conducted more effectively. Yet, in spite of its carefully crafted image, information technology is neither friendly nor neutral, and almost never benign. With notable exceptions, it is developed by unethical corporations, peddled by apathetic salesmen, and implemented by large organisations as a means of maximising control over the individual.

The widespread use of information technology is increasing the power and influence of government and corporations. One inevitable consequence is that the individual is subject to increased monitoring, regulation and control. . .

Our movements, transactions and personality are becoming known in a way that Orwell could scarcely have imagined. And yet, our dependence on technological systems is greater than at any point in history.

The key rule to ensure personal autonomy and independence is never to get too familiar, reliant, or friendly with the power centres around you. In embracing the exciting new fusion with technology, we have broken this ancient law. One result is that have now formally entered the first phase of the Post Orwellian State. The future should offer an expanding gulf between the illusion of personal autonomy, and the power of large organisations. . .

The assumption that technology is entirely good for us is misguided and dangerous. Some technologies are just plain malevolent, and their uses should have been outlawed years ago. Sadly, the people who know about the rancid underbelly of technology often reluctant to sound the alarm, for fear of being branded luddite or heretic. It is no exaggeration to say that there has been a conspiracy of silence about the threat of information technology. In the process, normally intelligent and thoughtful professionals have let us all down. The discourse and debate necessary in a free society has simply not taken place.

There is no Big Brother enforcing compliance with this New Order. People will happily surrender their most intimate data. The nightmare vision we sensed in 1971, is about to materialise.

In 1995, when Davies' article was originally published, he was the Director General of Privacy International, a Visiting Law Fellow in the University of Essex, and the author of Big Brother - Australia's growing web of surveillance (Simon & Schuster 1992).

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