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I
know a former missionary to Nigeria, a country infamous for its Internet scams.
She describes it as a land in which honor is nonexistent, money counts for
everything, and people learn to cheat one another from the cradle. I didn’t
believe her because, as I imagined, societal cohesion depends upon trust more
than law, so if you create an environment in which no one can trust anyone, you
destroy the possibility of a cohesive society. She stood her ground, saying
that the kind of greed and manipulation that people in this country associate
with the worst of the worst—Wall Street bankers and hedge fund managers—is
status quo in Nigeria where to be honest is to be a sucker. I’ve since come to
wonder how different America is from Nigeria. I’ll outline the reasons for my
concern by sharing a few news items and personal experiences from the past
couple of weeks.
2) Next
month, I’ll be eligible for Medicare, which is government-run health insurance
for people who are old or disabled (taxpayers pay into the system throughout
their working lives in order to benefit from it when they need it). Because
Medicare isn’t sufficient to keep a person from going bankrupt due to medical
expenses, the government works with private insurers whose job it is step in
where Medicare leaves off. There are dozens of these insurers, and they offer
dozens of different plans that cover various things and include various extras. Determining which insurer and which plan is best is
impossible unless you have a staff of lawyers who are versed in alphabet soup
and willing to read through one 150-page policy book after
another, each of which is meant to defy comprehension. Why, if the goal is to
provide health care to those whose minds and bodies are growing weaker due to
age and/or disability, doesn’t the government create a simple system under
which the policies of these private insurers can be easily understood and
compared or, better yet, eliminated altogether? My guess is that such a system would defeat the goal, which is to
make money for private insurers.
“But
why,” you might ask, “does the government care about making money for private
insurers?” Because those insurers provide politicians with massive campaign
contributions, expensive gifts, and private sector sinecures. “But why does selling
incomprehensible insurance policies to Medicare recipients enable insurance
companies to make more money?” Because it eliminates cost-versus-quality
competition. It’s like when you go to buy a mattress, and every store has a
different name for the same product. By making it impossible for customers to
compare prices, stores can compete on the basis of window-dressing rather than
cost or quality, and this means more money for everyone, except the consumer.
What makes this obfuscation especially immoral in the case of Medicare—and
keeping people in prison—is that it harms those who are the least able to
protect themselves—the ignorant, the impoverished, the mentally challenged, and
the taxpayer.
3) There
was a time when only loan sharks charged 30% interest, but the fools didn’t
know enough to buy the government so that they could do it legally. Who do you
turn to when you can’t pay your medical bills or you’re facing foreclosure?
Chase and Citibank are there for you when you think things can’t get any worse,
but what happens when things do get worse, when the medical bills keep coming,
the bank keeps threatening your home, and you can no longer use your credit
cards to juggle your bills because you can no longer afford the minimum monthly
payments? Maybe it’s the time to remind yourself that America is “the land of
opportunity,” the land that every politician calls the fairest, the most
generous, and the most compassionate nation on earth?
4) When the bills came in for my latest round of physical therapy, I noticed that I had never once received what I was charged for—entire series of 15-minute ultrasound sessions, 15-minute manual manipulation sessions, 15-minute exercise sessions, and 15-minute cervical traction sessions. When I finally found someone other than the therapist to complain to, he responded as follows about Oregon Medical Group’s billing policy: “…the Physical Therapist can provide anywhere from 8 minutes to 22 minutes and bill for 15 minutes of therapy.” No session ever ran over 8 minutes.
5) Reminisce
Magazine.
Its writers receive no compensation for their stories and photos, and the
company that owns Reminisce owns a
slew of other quaint publications. Peggy likes Reminisce because it takes her back to the ‘50s when she believed
her parents could protect her from serious harm, when—as she remembers
it—people were kind and noble, and America was admirable. I want Peggy to
have a magazine that brings her such joy, and I wish in retrospect that I had
kept its ugly little secret to myself, its secret being that, as soon as you
subscribe—and Reminisce encourages its
readers to subscribe for years at a time—it starts sending renewal notices that begin with “This is your last chance to keep Reminisce coming…” but don’t give you a clue as to when your
current subscription expires. Like most cheats, Reminisce preys on a vulnerable population.
6) But what of the rest of us? Is it even possible to be an ethical American? I’ve focused on those who get rich by hurting people, but what of the millions who work as cogs in the rich people’s wheels, the ones who staff the magazine subscription centers; who administer the “Medicare Advantage Plans;” who work in the prisons; who turn people away because they can’t afford medical care; who, in order to have a secure retirement, invest in companies whose policy is profit before all; all these plus the 300-million people whose taxes finance America’s wars and war crimes, its profit-driven destruction of our environment, its arrogance, its greed?
6) But what of the rest of us? Is it even possible to be an ethical American? I’ve focused on those who get rich by hurting people, but what of the millions who work as cogs in the rich people’s wheels, the ones who staff the magazine subscription centers; who administer the “Medicare Advantage Plans;” who work in the prisons; who turn people away because they can’t afford medical care; who, in order to have a secure retirement, invest in companies whose policy is profit before all; all these plus the 300-million people whose taxes finance America’s wars and war crimes, its profit-driven destruction of our environment, its arrogance, its greed?
That
which I wondered about Nigeria, I now wonder about my own country. What
cohesion binds a nation of people who equate morality with doing the legal
minimum, who elect conservative politicians for the purpose of abolishing such
legal protections as still stand between big business and the consumer, and between the patient and the healthcare industry? How far
do we have to go before we’re like Nigeria, and what will be the cost when we
are? I think Peggy is right about the old days in that, despite some significant human rights gains, too many of the gains
America has made have been technological, and too many of the losses have been
in such areas as trust, idealism, and community. Pay attention to the news and current culture. Look at the filth that is on
TV; observe the isolation of people on cellphones; note the abuse that is
commonplace in Internet discussion forums; listen to the venom of talk radio.
Things which once would have been unspeakably rude, tacky, vulgar, trashy, mean-spirited,
greedy, self-abasing, and self-centered, are now the norm. The biggest
difference between today and much of my life is that Americans used to be
optimists. Even during the darkest days of the ‘60s, the feeling was
that positive change could and would come. When was the last time
you heard anyone but a politician say that?
I know that this post proves nothing, but for those of us who remember an era when houses were seldom locked and bicycles didn't even have locks, experience means a lot, and twenty years of dropping crime rates matters but little. I pity those who have never known this country to be any way but what it now is because, despite its former faults, there was a time when I could say with a straight face that America stood for that which was good.
