Unbreaking Healthcare requires Unbreaking Politics

Editorial by Wayne Caswell, Founding Editor, Modern Health Talk

One thing I learned from running Modern Health Talk is that unbreaking healthcare requires unbreaking politics. And it’s not just our broken healthcare system that’s controlled by the corrupting influence of BIG Money in politics, but also education, climate, food supply, infrastructure, gun violence, and much more. All of these important issues come down to one growing problem: INEQUALITY – of income, wealth, justice, and political influence.

As I claim in Why American Healthcare is So Expensive, the biggest problem with our broken system is political corruption from wealthy special interests. A perversely profitable medical cartel has stolen trillions of dollars per year from the middle class, risking our health while protecting ill-gained profits with huge political influence “investments.” According to Steven Brill’s 2013 TIME magazine special report, Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills are Killing Us, insurers, hospitals, drug companies, testing companies, and medical equipment providers make up a medical industrial complex that spends three times more than the military industrial complex on political lobbying. They do that to protect the status quo and their profits, and they’ve seen huge returns on that investment. But politicians also deserve blame, for accepting their bribe money and doing their bidding.

Today’s article is based on a short film by Represent.Us.

Proposed Anti-Corruption Legislation

Last year Elizabeth Warren introduced her Anti-Corruption and Public Integrity Act in the Senate, and this year House Democrats introduced HR-1, a bundle of sweeping anti-corruption measures for stamping out the influence of money in politics and expanding voting rights. Both bills cover three main planks: campaign finance reform, strengthening the government’s ethics laws, and expanding voting rights — issues the 87% of voters from both parties support.

Sources of Corruption

Income Inequality, Healthcare and the Economy features a video infographic showing how extreme wealth and income inequality leads to unequal political influence and opportunity, which threatens our democracy. It also shows the direct relationships between:

• Worsening Inequality and Poverty,
• Poverty and Obesity,
• Obesity and Diabetes and other Chronic Illness,
• Chronic illness and Rising Healthcare Costs,
• Rising Healthcare Costs and our Economic Problems, and
• Special Interest Lobbying and Policies that Worsen Inequality in our Political and Healthcare Systems.

The Corporation is a complex and sobering documentary revealing the inner workings, curious history, controversial impacts, and possible futures of the modern corporation. Based on Bakan’s best-selling book, ”The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power,” the film helps us understand another source of corruption, why we can’t just trust “market forces” to control corporate behavior, and why industry needs regulatory oversight. Sadly, many CEOs today have adopted the same self-serving and psychopathic behavior of the corporation itself, putting society at risk for personal gain. Much of that has to do with misaligned incentives and legal requirements to serve shareholders above all else.

The film sees corporate behavior as often like that of a psychopath, compared to a sociopath. It notes that a sociopath’s crimes are typically disorganized and spontaneous, while a psychopath’s crimes are well planned and concealed. To fix healthcare, we must also change the incentives that influence bad corporate behavior.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Exposes Legalized Corruption

The Fix Begins in State and Local Government

“The US Constitution gives States sole control over how elections are run, even federal elections,” When States fix gerrymandering and election laws, it gives regular people an immediate impact on how we elect Congress, and how we hold them accountable. It’s happened again and again, from giving women the right to vote, to inter-racial and same-sex marriage, and it can happen too with Universal Healthcare, and already is starting to.