Eight Ways Privatization Has Failed America

[Playinghardball]

PAUL BUCHHEIT FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Some of America's leading news analysts are beginning to recognize the fallacy of the "free market." Said Ted Koppel, "We are privatizing ourselves into one disaster after another." Fareed Zakaria admitted, "I am a big fan of the free market...But precisely because it is so powerful, in places where it doesn't work well, it can cause huge distortions." They're right. A little analysis reveals that privatization doesn't seem to work in any of the areas vital to the American public.

Health Care

Our private health care system is by far the most expensive system in the developed world. Forty-two percent of sick Americans skipped doctor's visits and/or medication purchases in 2011 because of excessive costs. The price of common surgeries is anywhere from three to ten times higher in the U.S. than in Great Britain, Canada, France, or Germany. Some of the documented tales: a $15,000 charge for lab tests for which a Medicare patient would have paid a few hundred dollars; an $8,000 special stress test for which Medicare would have paid $554; and a $60,000 gall bladder operation, which was covered for $2,000 under a private policy.

As the examples begin to make clear, Medicare is more cost-effective. According to the Council for Affordable Health Insurance, Medicare administrative costs are about one-third that of private health insurance. More importantly, our ageing population has been staying healthy. While as a nation we have a shorter life expectancy than almost all other developed countries, Americans covered by Medicare INCREASED their life expectancy by 3.5 years from the 1960s to the turn of the century.

Free-market health care has been taking care of the CEOs. Ronald DePinho, president of MD Anderson Cancer Center in Texas, made $1,845,000 in 2012. That's over ten times as much as the $170,000 made by the federal Medicare Administrator in 2010. Stephen J. Hemsley, the CEO of United Health Group, made three hundred times as much, with most of his $48 million coming from stock gains.

Water

A Citigroup economist gushed, "Water as an asset class will, in my view, become eventually the single most important physical-commodity based asset class, dwarfing oil, copper, agricultural commodities and precious metals."

A 2009 analysis of water and sewer utilities by Food and Water Watch found that private companies charge up to 80 percent more for water and 100 percent more for sewer services. A more recent study confirms that privatization will generally "increase the long-term costs borne by the public." Privatization is "shortsighted, irresponsible and costly."

Numerous examples of water privatization abuses or failures have been documented in California, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, New Jersey, Texas, Massachusetts, Rhode Island -- just about anywhere it's been tried. Meanwhile, corporations have been making outrageous profits on a commodity that should be almost free. Nestle buys water for about 1/100 of a penny per gallon, and sells it back for ten dollars. Their bottled water is not much different from tap water.

Worse yet, corporations profit from the very water they pollute. Dioxin-dumping Dow Chemicals is investing in water purification. Monsanto has been accused of privatizing its own pollution sites in order to sell filtered water back to the public.


Internet, TV, and Phone

More at: http://truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/item/18126-eight-ways-privatization-has-failed-america

[GiaGiovanni]

1. It was meant to fail America

You didn't believe the PR did you?

[yurbud]

4. It was meant to enrich the already rich

Politicians love it because it essentially socializes corruption, ensuring their big donors get richer so they have more money to give to them, and insulating them from losses since they have a captive customer--us.

This is not really a conservative or liberal issue. We can debate whether the government or private sector does a better job at something, but giving taxpayer dollars to for-profit companies to provide government services is the worst of both worlds.

[GiaGiovanni]

9. Who have a global reach, not an American goal

And remember, rich counts in the BILLIONS now. A millionaire is what the traditional upper middle class would have been adjusted for inflation.

[yurbud]

11. millionaires are like poor whites only more so

they think they are in the elite, but they don't the wink and the nod when the bubble is about to be popped and get at least as screwed as the middle and working class.

I teach community college and had a former real estate millionaire in class who had ended up homeless.

[blm]

2. Paul forgot one BIG one: Sec of Def Cheney privatized military logistics in 1991.

The bombing of the USS Cole happened when the ship was awaiting refueling by KBR (Halliburton) and the bombers slipped through KBR's service area.

That should have been made loud and clear during that 2000 election, but, the media has always been too scared to buck that crowd of fascists. And Clinton certainly wasn't interested in addressing that aspect of the bombing.

[yurbud]

5. wow--that's a great detail. Do you have a source?

I believe you, but I want to be able to share it with others.

[blm]

7. There are a few stories on the privatization....

<<As Defense Secretary, Mr. Cheney commissioned a study for the U.S. Department of Defense by Brown and Root Services (now Kellogg, Brown and Root), a wholly owned subsidiary of Halliburton. The study recommended that private firms like Halliburton should take over logistical support programs for U.S. military operations around the world. Just two years after he was Secretary of Defense, Cheney stepped through the revolving door linking the Department of Defense with defense contractors and became CEO of Halliburton. Halliburton was the principal beneficiary of Cheney�s privatization efforts for our military�s logistical support and Cheney was paid $44 million for five year's work with them before he slipped back through the revolving door of war profiteering to become Vice-President of the United States. When asked about the money he received from Halliburton, Cheney said. "I tell you that the government had absolutely nothing to do with it.">>


http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1117-22.htm

KBR was handling the refueling.

Media seemed to have forgotten in 2000 that KBR is the European arm of Halliburton.

[yurbud]

8. I knew about Cheney and privatization but not the Cole piece

is that in the Common Dreams story?

[blm]

10. No. But KBR was handling the logistics in Yemen. People didn't link the two

at the time, probably because it happened under Clinton, and media stayed focused on what Clinton and military may have done wrong, not the fact that the bombing was done when the Cole was EXPECTING to be refueled by a KBR refueling boat. The articles I saw would refer to refueling boats, but, not that the area was controlled by KBR.

[Wilms]

3. Don't forget privatized surveillance. n/t

[WillyT]

6. K & R !!!