| Number 181 | November 29, 2002 |
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This Week:
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Greetings, It has been two months since the last "Stroll Through the News With Nygaard," so I technically should have published another one this week. I looked through my clips for the last two months and counted 86 separate articles that I thought merited comment. That's a bit excessive, don't you think? So, by next week I hope to have the list narrowed down to manageable levels and we'll have a nice stroll. And, I haven't forgotten my promise to pursue the various manifestations of propaganda in wartime. It'll be another couple of weeks, though (at least) since there is so much news to cover. The good news—good in a sick, twisted way—is that it looks like it's going to be "wartime" in this country for a long while, so the information will still be timely next month (and the month after, and the month after that, and...) OK, enough macabre humor, let's get on with the main event: Another issue of the Notes! Until next week, Nygaard |
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Many United Statesians share the suspicion that the health care system in the United States is not working very well. Some might go so far as to say, as did John Breaux of Louisiana, long one of the most conservative Senate Democrats, when he recently told the press, "The system is collapsing around us." Breaux's comment was reported in an October 13th Opinion piece in the New York Times ("All the News That's Fit to Print") by Marcia Angell, former editor of the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine. In support of Mr. Breaux's sentiment, Ms. Angell noted that private health insurance premiums are rising at a rate of about 13 percent per year—and as much as 25 percent in some areas of the country. She further pointed out that "coverage is shrinking, as more employers decide to cap their contributions to health insurance plans and workers find they cannot pay their rapidly expanding share." More people are uninsured, too, as we see below. Bad Insurance, Bad Food, Racism At Fault The Star Tribune (Newspaper of the Twin Cities!) had reported on health insurance on September 30th in a small page 4 article called "Number Without Health Insurance Rises in U.S." That article pointed out that last year's new uninsured raised the total in the United States to a disgraceful 41.2 million people (they didn't use the word "disgraceful;" that was me). Star Trib reporter David Westphal points out that the numbers are bound to get worse in coming years "due to rising health-care costs, state cutbacks in Medicaid, unemployment increases and employer decisions to pass along most costs to workers." Lack of insurance is bad for one's health. So is a bad diet, as we learn from an article in the "Science Times" section of the NY Times of November 12th, headlined, "Good Health Is Linked to Grocer." The article said that "poor eating habits may stem from a lack of access to fresh, nutritious foods, new research suggests." Poor eating habits have been linked to higher incidences of cancer, diabetes, hypertension, birth defects and heart disease. The study, conducted by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Public Health, found that "the more supermarkets a neighborhood has, the more fruits and vegetables its residents eat." Then the study noted that "five times more supermarkets were located in census tracts where white participants lived compared to black participants." Addressing this racist pattern in the food industry could make a big difference, we can see, as the study notes that "black Americans' fruit and vegetable intake increased by 32 percent for each additional supermarket in the neighborhoods where they lived." Study co-author Dr. Steven B. Wing points out that "Part of the significance of this study is that it promotes an environmental understanding of nutrition instead of just holding people responsible individually for what they eat. In some ways, we in public health have tended to blame the victim. This work shows that if you don't live in an area where it's possible to have easy access to reasonably priced, nutritious foods, then it's not your fault that you're not eating as healthfully as people are in other areas." Wing adds, "If you either don't have transportation, or you work long hours because of your economic situation, or you feel that when you go to a store in a white neighborhood, you are under surveillance, it's not going to be as easy for you to have access to good food at affordable prices." Dr. Kimberly Morland, lead researcher on the study, points out that "we see differences in health by race and by wealth all the time in public health studies." Why this story was in the "Science Times" section, and not on the front page, is a mystery to me. "The Healthier Side of Health Care" Does all this information make you wonder why major changes haven't been made already? For the answer, we turn once again to the Business Section of the paper, this time the Times Business Section of October 23rd. The headline is the heading to this section (appearing above in quotation marks), and the article explains that health care costs are going through the roof, and that "patients, employers, and government health programs are feeling the financial pain." The article poses the poignant question, "But where is the money going?" Check out the following comments for your answer. "The big winners for now include hospitals,...particularly those that...dominate local markets," says the Times. "[T]he strongest managed care companies...are reporting sharply higher profits," we read. "Many health insurers are enjoying robust profits," we are told, which they are getting by "passing on their costs—and then some—to employers, dropping money-losing customers, and doing little to compete on price." [Ed. note: "Money-losing" = "sick"] These simple quotations, taken together, go a long way in explaining why the system is, in many people's minds, "working:" What To Do? We'll let Ms. Angell have the last word, as she was quite eloquent in her diagnosis and in her prescription: "The fatal flaw in the system is that we treat health care as a commodity.... When health care becomes a commodity, the criterion for receiving it is ability to pay, not medical need." Her prescription? "What we need is a national single-payer system that would eliminate unnecessary administrative costs, duplication and profits....[W]e can well afford to provide it for everyone if we end the waste and profiteering of our market-based system." For those who want to get involved in the organizing efforts for universal health care in the United States, you could do worse than to contact Physicians for a National Health Plan at www.pnhp.org/ or the Universal Health Care Action Network at www.uhcan.org/. |
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There is perhaps no statement that generates less controversy than to say that the U.S. government supports the spread of democracy throughout the world. I would like to believe that sunny sentiment, but there is quite a bit of evidence to the contrary, I'm afraid. Take a look at the following tapestry, woven from recent news reports, and see if you don't agree. The New York Times ("All the News That's Fit to Print") of November 25th, commenting on the election of "leftist" Lucio Edwin Gutierrez to the presidency of Ecuador, commented that "Mr. Gutierrez is the latest politician to benefit from the disenchantment many Latin Americans have with traditional political parties that followed free-market prescriptions pushed by the United States and multilateral lending agencies. Most countries in Latin America have seen little tangible benefit from these steps, with poverty rising and living standards falling." Leave aside for a moment the euphemistic description of increasing poverty and misery as "little tangible benefit." Consider the kernel of truth in the comment, calling to mind as it does the recent victory of the progressive Workers' Party candidate in Brazil, the still-popular (if beleaguered) twice-elected populist Hugo Chavez still holding on as president in Venezuela, and the strong showing of the leftist indigenous MAS party's Evo Morales in last June's national elections in Bolivia. All of these candidates ran with platforms based on a rejection of the so-called "Washington Consensus," which is the term in international economics for the complete "marketization" of everything (I'm oversimplifying here, obviously. More on the Consensus in a future Nygaard Notes.) The "Washington Consensus," opposition to which is winning elections all over Latin America, might more accurately be called the "International Financial Power Structure Consensus," but that doesn't roll off the tongue quite so easily. And it is true that the powerful international groups are run by and for Washington; according to economist Jeff Faux, the chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, Michael Mussa, readily acknowledged at a public conference in Washington, D.C. in 1999 that the IMF does not make a major decision without first checking with the U.S. Treasury. So, how is the United States government dealing with the democratic process in Latin America as it begins to reject the plans of The World's Only Superpower to organize the world economy even more in its favor than it already is? Well, the Associated Press, in reporting on the October 27th election of Luiz Ignacio "Lula" Da Silva, remarked that the candidate's "criticism of free-market policies is at odds with Washington." Then the AP went on to point out that "the [U.S.] administration has been careful not to criticize Da Silva during the campaign, aware that any comment could be seen as interference." Why do I say "Ha Ha Ha" when I read this? Here's why: Three months earlier (July 15), there was an article in the London Guardian newspaper reporting on last summer's national elections in Bolivia, South America's poorest country. The article, headlined "Bolivia's Left-wing Upstart Alarms U.S.," led off with this comment: "The United States government is actively intervening in Bolivia's choice of new president next month, warning that U.S. aid will be withdrawn if the socialist Evo Morales is appointed. It is the latest in a series of recent interventions by the U.S. in Latin American elections in an attempt to keep left-wing politicians from power." "Carefully Structured to Affect Elections" There are many ways for the U.S. to use its power to "interfere" in other country's democratic processes. A couple of articles from the Business Section of the Times make clear one of the ways. Two months before the Brazilian election, the International Monetary Fund approved a $30 billion dollar loan to that country. The NY Times ran two articles on the loan in its Business Section, one about the mechanics of the loan and one that was headlined "I.M.F. Loan To Brazil Also Shields U.S. Interests." Paragraph nine of the second article more or less tells the story: "The I.M.F. loan was carefully structured to affect Brazil's upcoming elections, in which two left-wing candidates are in the lead and had been threatening to reverse Brazil's free-market approach to economics and trade." The way the loan "affected" the election was by including conditions that "require the government to make almost no modification of its existing policies," regardless of who is elected. That's real power, and the U.S. systematically and unashamedly uses it to subvert democracy when that democracy threatens our interests. The U.S. government's anti-democratic posture is not confined to Latin America, as evidenced by a Times report in their October 2nd edition on the U.S. efforts to find someone from among the numerous (and always-fighting) Iraqi opposition who "would rule the country most effectively if Mr. Hussein were overthrown." The Times in this case cited a former CIA and State Department officer named Reuel Gerecht as being "worried that the administration could not decide whether it wanted to promote a ‘nice Sunni military leader who will assure stability' or to encourage a real, and possibly messy, democracy." Refer to the examples above for insight into what the word "messy" means in this context. On October 24th the Times reported on U.S. government worries that the Palestinian Authority might hold elections in January. In this case, the U.S. opposition to democracy is revealed in the Times' explanation of why the U.S. is discouraging these elections: "The Bush administration fears that Mr. Arafat would win re-election as president, undercutting its effort to sideline him." As I write this, it has just been announced that Henry Kissinger, the ultimate anti-democrat, has been chosen to head the Bush administration's inquiry into the events of a certain September 11th. The irony is almost too much to bear, given Kissinger's key role in subverting democracy and unleashing untold terror on an earlier September 11th, the one that occurred in 1973. That was the day that Salvador Allende, the democratically-elected president of Chile, was killed in a military coup supported, funded, cheered, and likely directed, by the U.S. government. Allow me to close with Mr. Kissinger's immortal words from 1970, speaking of the upcoming elections in Chile and the U.S. plans to (once again) subvert the process and keep the Socialist (not communist) Allende from winning:
The Kissinger tradition, as we can see in our daily papers, continues up to the present day. |