Subject: [big campaign] New Huff Post from Creamer -- Say No to Corporate Parasites
From: [email-masked]
To: [email-masked], [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 18 Sep 2009 09:06:15 EDT
List-Id: <bigcampaign.googlegroups.com>

Time to Just Say No to Giant Corporate “Parasites”—and  Recognize Them for 
What They Are 

Sounds like a movie script.  Giant parasites stalk the American  landscape 
disguised as benign upstanding participants in the “free market.”   
The dictionary defines parasite as: 
“An organism that lives on or in an organism of another  species, known as 
the host, from the body of which it obtains  nutriment.” 
In fact, there  are a number of major corporations in America who do very 
little productive  work – never making products or delivering services that 
benefit their  consumers.  Instead, the profits  they earn and the big CEO 
salaries they pay are derived by sucking or skimming a  portion of the dollars 
they have convinced the Government to send through their  corporate 
accounts – generally to perform a function that is or ought to be an  inherently 
governmental function. 
Ironically, many of these corporate  parasites are the loudest defenders of 
“free markets” and the most vociferous  opponents of “government takeovers,
” when in fact they exist by feeding off the  taxpayers. 
Three examples  have been in the news of late: 
1). Banks that provide government guaranteed  student loans. The house 
voted yesterday to end its four-decade practice of  subsidizing private lenders 
to make student loans.  Since the 1960’s, the government has  subsidized 
banks to lend students money and guaranteed lenders against loss if  students 
defaulted.   
But since the  early 1990’s the government itself has done direct lending 
for many student  loans and avoided paying the subsidy to the banks. Why, 
after all, should banks  take a percentage of every dollar to generate loans if 
the taxpayers guarantee  the loan in full?  In fact, it turns  out that the 
government – which, after all, has a responsibility to provide  higher 
education to its citizenry – can provide loans directly at a much cheaper  price 
than it can through the banks.  
In fact it’s  estimated that eliminating the subsidy to the banks will save 
$40 billion that  can be transferred into the Pell Grant program that 
provides college grants to  moderate and low income students. 
2). Private military contractors that provide  security services. One of 
the things that defines civilized society is that  the government has a 
monopoly on the use of lethal force.  Yet over the last decade private  military 
security firms have exploded.  They have been hired with increasing frequency 
to do essentially  governmental security functions.  We’ve seen the results 
in the murders of civilians by Blackwater  operatives in Iraq.  And the 
growth of free-standing,  mercenary armies that are available for hire by 
governments around the world is  a danger to international security.   
But these  contractors are also economic parasites, since they charge a 
great deal more to  do functions that could otherwise be performed by the 
government. In fact, most  of their personnel are trained by the American 
military.  After they leave the service and go to  work making much more than they 
would if they re-enlisted for another turn with  the Army or Marines. Then, 
the Blackwaters of the world turn around and bill  their people out at huge 
markups so that the taxpayers – who paid for their  training in the first 
place – have to pay a corporation for the privilege of  hiring them back at 
much higher rates.   
3). Private health insurance companies.  These are the granddaddy of all 
parasitic operations.  Remember that every other industrial  society has long 
since decided that financing the health care of its citizens is  an 
inherently governmental function – that it is cheaper and much more  consistent with 
our values – to provide health care to all as a  right. 
With that  approach, every other industrial society pays 50% less than we 
do per person for  health care and, according to the World Health 
Organization, 36 countries have  better health care outcomes than we do in the U.S. 
Remember that  health insurance companies don’t provide an iota of health 
care services.  They do hire an army of claims agents to  deny claims for 
coverage, and another army of salesmen and admen to sell you  policies that you 
would automatically have in most other countries.  They simply take your 
money, skim off  profits and CEO salaries and then – once they get their end –
 pay for your  health care.   
We know that  the one thing government does very well is to spread risk –
manage insurance  pools.  Medicare and Social Security  are two of the most 
successful programs in history.  And the health care financing  authorities in 
countries like France and Spain are pretty  good at it too.  
The so-called “Medicare Advantage” program is a great  example of a 
side-by-side comparison of how the private insurance companies  compare with 
government run insurance programs. Medicare Advantage was set up by  the Bush 
Administration and Republican Congress to allow private insurance  companies to 
skim off a share of Federal Medicare dollars.  Originally, the private 
insurance  companies claimed they would provide these services more efficiently 
than the  “government.”  But it turned out  they required a 14% to 19% 
subsidy above the normal costs of Medicare.   
As the _Economic Policy  Institute_ 
(http://www.epi.org/publications/entry/pm142/)  has pointed out, “In a nut shell, Medicare Advantage  plans are 
private plans funded through Medicare to provide similar benefits,  but at a 
14% higher cost on average, according to the Medicare  Payment Advisory 
Commission (MedPAC), an independent Congressional agency. Eliminating these 
overpayments would  free up $157 billion over 10 years, a substantial down payment 
on health  care reform.”    
Now the private  insurance industry is battling tooth and nail to prevent a 
public health  insurance program from competing for its non-Medicare 
business.  They want to continue to skim their  share off of every health care 
dollar they  can. 
In fact, they  hope that the final insurance reform bill will require 
people to buy  their products without any competition from a public plan or rate 
regulation to  limit the amount they can skim into the hands of Wall Street 
investors and  CEO’s.  
That’s why  President Obama has proposed that the final health insurance 
reform bill include  a robust public health insurance option that doesn’t 
leave us with a  mandate to buy insurance from a monopoly of private insurers 
(that are, by the  way, also exempt from the anti-trust laws). That would just 
guarantee a  government-mandated stream of revenue on which the private 
insurance companies  can feed. 
Of course, corporate parasites like these have always  existed.  But they 
have burgeoned  over the last several decades as some of the best and 
brightest graduates of our  universities have been convinced that they would be “
chumps” to go out and  create products and services that provide value to the 
economy. Much better to  work for a corporate parasite that can make huge 
sums of money simply by  convincing government to keep directing huge streams 
of revenue through its  corporate coffers and then slicing off its share as 
the money comes by.  
It’s time for the age of the corporate parasite to come  to an end – 
otherwise, we’re the “chumps”. 
Robert Creamer is a longtime political organizer and  strategist, and 
author of the recent book:  Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, 
available on _Amazon.com._ 
(http://www.amazon.com/Listen-Your-Mother-Straight-Progressives/dp/0979585295/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1213241439&sr=8-1)  

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