We Have Lost the Public Interest

It's the public interest. That's right, the public interest that we have lost.

We are seemingly locked in yet another perpetual argument about health care. Republicans once again, after losing in Congress, after losing in the Supreme Court, now will vote meaninglessly, since the Senate and the President will not go along, to repeal the Affordable Care Act. And they promise, scouts honor, to repeal it forever in the future, never to give up in their efforts to "save us from socialism".

And their reasons for rabid opposition: Government takeover of private enterprise. Socialism.

Nonsense.

For the past fifty years, there has been a trend in our country in the exact opposite direction. Privatization has been the call conservatives and unfortunately even some progressives have heeded. The United States has become a country of privatized public services, corporate run governmental programs, and a host of reductions in traditional governmental services.

States have privatized hospitals, prisons, schools, highways, canals, airports; etc. The federal government is about ready to privatize mail, the postal service is about ready to go to UPS and others.

I would argue that health care was essentially privatized in the past fifty years not socialized as my conservative friends like to shout. Medicare is NOT socialized medicine. In fact, governmental owned medical services are at an all time low.

I can remember a county hospital in our town and county clinics. These were publically owed hospitals, non-profit, that were paid for by a combination of tax dollars, patient fees, insurance payments; etc. They operated way cheaper than their current for profit cousins.

President Bush used the Iraq War as a grand experiment of privatization and failed miserably. The Marshall Plan was implemented by U.S. Army Privates, who had been drafted, operating tractors for $25 a week, rebuilding countries they had blown up five years before. In Iraq, private companies were paid thousands of dollars a week, with weak governmental oversight, to repair damages the all volunteer Army had rendered. Private corporations made a mint in Iraq.

Privatization is all over the place, costing the American taxpayer our economic future. The result, is a deficit that is going to take generations to pay down, an economy in chaos, and a political war in the United States.

When the public interest is most in play, health care, education, infrasructure; etc., for profit, free market solutions do not work cheaply.

When private interest is involved, where innovation is most in play, private enterprise solutions work best.

This basic rule of government and economics has been lost on us, in the past fifty years.

Thanks to the conservatives, the line of efficient, apolitical governing, has been crossed, with public interest issues being more and more addressed with privatization.

The New Deal is long gone, replaced by Haliburton.

In Mississippi a private prison company was hired to run juvenile detention. The result was a system that hired former gang members as guards, that did not allow government inspection of problems, and culminated in children being beaten so savagely that brain damage occurred. The state, after being beaten by lawsuits, finally closed the private prisons. But the inefficient, expensive brutal private prisons had done their damage to a generation of young people. And, Mississippi was out millions of dollars.

I would argue that the Affordable Care Act is a privatization of health care, but we have gone so far to the right, it is attacked as a government controlled program.

But, it was the brainchild of the Heritage Foundation, its cousin was implemented by the present Republican candidate for President, and its roots are deep in the private sector, with some governmental regulation oversight. The fact that the conservative right attacks what is at its core, a privatized approach to health care, is indicative of how far gone traditional government programs are.

When a public interest is addressed with for profit private companies, costs go up because the company must make a profit. Supposedly, savings occur because employee costs go down with a private company, because most are non-union. But, as the example in Mississippi shows, the non-union, non civil service employees, are usually poorly trained, poorly paid, and many times fail in their tasks. The overall cost to the taxpayer, after all the lawsuits, jailbreaks, and screw ups, is more.

How else do you explain the trillions of dollars that were wasted in Iraq. Privatization does not work to replace government. It don't work!

But nothing was learned from Iraq, or Katrina. America continues its love affair with governmental by private business, now endorsing the Affordable Care Act as a "government control solution", when in fact it is the height of privatization.

The good old county hospital, where my second daughter was born, and I paid the bill in cash since it was so small, is long gone, with for profit hospitals in its place; where my last bill for a simple out patient sinus operation was $64,000. I am reminded of the old T.V. show, the $64,000 question, where contestants vied for a "fortune". It cost Medicare, my Supplemental Insurance, and me a "fortune" for a simple sinus operation with no overnight hospital stay. That is the result of a system that addresses public issues with for profit solutions, that are incredibly expensive.

Privatization has cost the taxpayer trillions of dollars over the past fifty years. The truth is the "old" civil service system, the draft, and other governmental approaches to providing quality services at low cost to the taxpayer, have been replaced by a system of for profit private companies, that promise savings, but once in place, rip off the taxpayer, deliver inferior service, and do not serve the public but serve themselves.

The private interest can never serve the public interest, and we are all paying for it everyday in inferior service for incredible cost.