The World Is Watching Us

The world has been looking not at Ferguson, Missouri but at our country.  Twenty Four Hour news cycles do just that.

The thought that a human being irrespective of race, age, gender could be left on the street in the heat of a summer day for hours after being shot by the police is indefensible and irrespective of whether the shooting was warranted or not. In fact it does the opposite as it looks to many that it was to give the local police time to circle the wagons and to get their stories matched.

Even worse was the initial statement made by the Chief a full day later at 10 AM that began with what has been shown to be disconnected with the shooting, I.e. the incident in the convenience store. By this time the chief certainly knew this was smoke-screen and was trying to give a cause and effect that was a non-starter. In the afternoon statement he admitted that that the suspect was indeed stopped for walking in the middle of the street and gave no reason for why he had prefaced his earlier comments as he did. But the harm had been done.

For many people around the world, the image from the over-reaction by the local police was not dissimilar to one a decade-plus ago. Then the world looked in horror as military assault vehicles were brought in to control public demonstrations in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. Now they saw similar actions, not in China, but in a country that prides itself as living under a constitution which gives all its people the right to assemble and protest. 

The mere concept of what we saw in Ferguson makes one think (momentarily) that the fears voiced by survivalists in their mountain redoubts might actually have merit.

This morning I listened to a governor of one of the east-coast states who was adamant that weaponry such as what we saw used in a town of 25,000 or even a city should only be maintained by the state police or national guard and its use only authorized by a chain of command: police chief – mayor – governor - state police and if needed, the national guard. That made sense to me.

Even the military does not maintain quick access at bases within the US except when ordered by higher authority. Just ask the OD at your local base if he has the authority to order out body armored troops in APC’s and armored Humvees.

When I saw that 96,000 machine guns had been transferred from the military to local police units I cringed. The number is staggering when you try to figure out where these went and what size village or local community now has these. One has to ask as well what level of training locals receive and more important how they are secured. Scary to think of Barney Fife with a 50 caliber air-cooled on top of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle.

We have no problem when e.g. the CDC is called in to assist in an outbreak of Flu of Hepatitis as their expertise would far outweigh local healthcare providers. Why then is it not the same for civil protests like this. The answer is it the two scenarios are alike or better put, should be viewed and acted-on in the same manner.

The Justice Department was called in when local justice found everyone innocent of killing or terrorizing civil rights workers.  Calling them in there was the right thing to do. 

Jus as then, the final judgment must be made by a jury of people who must be able to look objectively at all the elements.  The knee-jerk reaction by the authorities in Ferguson foretells that would not be the case. Using State and Federal resources was surely the correct approach.

What Is Driving Up the Cost 0f Healthcare in America?

A bit simplistic perhaps but should we not also consider the corresponding growth of earnings (profit) in critical providers of services: the pharmaceutical industry, for-profit hospital companies, healthcare insurance groups. 

Bottom line is that we have morphed the multifactorial healthcare enterprise from one in which many of its components were previously focused on providing necessary and at times critical services and products for public good to one of providing profits for shareholders. 

A number of pharmaceutical companies were once family owned or directed by a foundation; hospitals were community owned and managed; many insurers were not-for-profit. Our healthcare system was based on reacting to the needs of sick people; now it is reacting to Wall Street and what it “expects”.

Can we not try to understand that there may well be some components of our economy that should not be viewed from a venture capital perspective? If not, then we must accede that the cost of healthcare will continue to increase because it must; that is the premise of how both publicly traded companies and those managed by private investors operate

. 

The main objective of all such companies is to provide a return for their investors notwithstanding the means that may need to be employed to achieve their projected earnings. Healthcare is no longer a concept or an ideal; it has become a product no different in the eyes of the investment community than any other product based industry. The result is that profit has replaced quality as the primary goal. 

One only has to ask why we have the highest cost of healthcare in multiples over other developed nations and yet the non-business related outcomes, i.e., the overall quality of patient outcomes as reflected by long established standards such as life expectancy and infant mortality falls far short. 

We continue to be told that our healthcare is the finest in the world. That simply is not the case if looked at across the whole of our nation. We mandate education for children and have laws to compel parents to enroll their children in schools and provide the schools for that purpose. We do not provide the same access for healthcare. It comes with a price tag. 

We see education as an entitlement as it is appreciated as critical to the future of the country. We do not see healthcare in a similar manner with the result that the same children who are afforded education often do not have adequate healthcare provision.

The why is simple. We fail to recognize healthcare as a basic right of citizenship and rather see it as a benefit that may or may not be provided. No other developed country holds that belief. 

Can this conviction be changed? The question must first be is this even feasible in America with the increasing dominance of publicly traded healthcare groups and the influence they ostensibly exercise over elected public officials from State Houses to Washington DC.