For-Profit Insurance Companies & Health Care/HMO Business In 1990s Revisited

No Benefit: Crisis In America’s Health Industry by Lawrence Weiss indicated in the 1990s that the giant Prudential, Aetna Life Casualty and CIGNA insurance companies then had a special interest in the Health Care/HMO Business:

“Commercial insurance corporations in particular are purchasing a large portion of HMOs. For example, in 1990 Aetna Life Casualty agreed to shell out up to $34 million to purchase Partners National Health Plans, which is among the five largest health maintenance organizations in the United States. CIGNA Healthplan, Inc., also ranks among the top five. Prudential recently expanded its HMO, ProCare into the hot California market…”

And Hoover’s Handbook of American Business noted in the early 1990s that “Prudential’s health plan offerings, enrolling 2.5 million people [1991 sales of $791 million] include PruCare HMO and PruCare Plus” and “The American Association of Retired Persons is its largest group-health client.”

The Canadian plan and/or Single-Payer health care reform proposals would apparently create a less costly plan than the kind of health care reform programs that were developed by for-profit Big insurance companies over the last twenty years. As No Benefit: Crisis In America’s Health Insurance Industry revealed as long ago as the 1990s:

“A study in the state of Washington by Washington Citizen Action indicated that `it cost commercial insurance companies like Prudential and Aetna $148.9 million more to provide Washington residents with insurance than it would have cost the Canadian system or the Medicare program to provide the same benefits.’ The Washington researchers estimated that 126,000 uninsured Washington residents could be provided health insurance with the money wasted by commercial health insurance overhead in their state…”

(Downtown 10/13/93)

Time For Universal Medicaid In USA?

Instead of simply cutting the Pentagon’s military budget by 90 percent and simply providing free health care for the millions of people in the United States who now lack health insurance by ordering the Department of Health and Human Services to immediately start issuing federal Medicaid cards to all U.S. citizens, the Democratic Obama-Clinton Administration’s complicated health tax scam will only probably provide health insurance cards to the uninsured in exchange for more U.S. worker paycheck tax deductions.

In countries like Russia, the UK, the Netherlands and Cuba, ironically, health care has long been free. According to National Health Insurance, in Russia “personal medical services are available to the entire population at no direct costs,” in the UK “the professional attention of a general practitioner is made available free of charge to everyone” and “no charges are made…for clinical examinations” of teeth, and in the Netherlands “an insured person generally receives free care for any medical services needed” and “dental treatment is also provided free of charge.” In Cuba, according to The Complete Travel Guide To Cuba, “should you become ill from any cause, you will be entitled to the same free health care as Cuban citizens” and “this means hospital and physician services…will be provided at no charge.” (Downtown 10/13/93)

Nader's 1974 Warning On National Health Insurance Revisited

In his July 1974 testimony before the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee, Public Citizen Health Research Group spokesperson Ralph Nader stated the following:

“To take the worst features of what now passes for a health care system in the form of billions of dollars in annual retentions (profits and expenses) for private health insurance companies, billions wasted on unnecessary hospitalizations, inappropriate and useless drugs, and thousands of excess hospital beds—and then to add to this a so-called national health insurance plan which requires low-wage earners to pay far more of their income than the rich through payroll taxes, deductibles and coinsurance—is to perpetuate a fraud on the American public.

“There is no room in taxpayer funded national health insurance for private insurance companies. They have already proved they are far more concerned with their over $5 billion profits and retentions than with providing low-cost comprehensive preventive health care.

“You only have to look over the history of Metropolitan, Prudential, and other health and life insurance companies…to see how little attention is being paid to preventive health care…

“Congress should reject any plan designed to massively subsidize a private corporate insurance system whose primary objectives are increasing their wasteful ways and increasing profits.

“What is needed…is a federally administered publicly accountable financing mechanism with revenues derived from progressive taxing mechanisms.

“This is also an important point. The taxing system to fund these plans should not be regressive. It should be progressive in fact…”

(Downtown 10/13/93)

CIA Intervention In Panama Historically Revisited

The CIA apparently played an important role in both preparing for and carrying out the Pentagon invasion of Panama in 1989 [nearly 20 years ago]. As Eclipse: The Last Days of the CIA by Mark Perry revealed:

“Reagan signed a presidential finding that directed the CIA to provide secret nonlethal assistance to anti-Noriega forces inside Panama. This support included a radio transmitter and funding for a propaganda campaign to be run by opposition figures in the United States and the Canal Zone. The CIA chief of station in Panama was put in charge of disbursing the aid and organizing a credible political alternative to Noriega…

“CIA planning for the Noriega operation went forward in mid-May 1988…

“…Programs were approved at a high-level meeting at the White House in mid-February, when Bush, Baker, GATES, Webster and Stoltz decided to give opposition forces $10 million to help in the upcoming May elections…

“The agency participated fully in Operation Just Cause. It hastily set up a Panama Task Force that worked with a special liaison committee at the Defense Department. The CIA’s jobs were among the most important: to draw up targets, recruit new agents inside Panama, review on-site changes in the PDF order of battle, and debrief Panamanian immigrants on the habits and schedules of Noriega and his assistants. Their operations centered on psychological warfare, to grind away at the PDF in the days and hours leading up to American intervention…In the midst of the battle the CIA was required…to usher the new leaders of the nation through their first day in office…”

(Downtown 1/19/94)

Media Censorship In Post-Allende Chile Revisited

In its 1988 World Report, Information, Freedom and Censorship, the London-based Article 19 human rights organization described the situation in post-Allende Chile during the 1970s and 1980s by stating the following:

“Gen. Augusto Pinochet Ugarte has ruled Chile in conjunction with the commanders of the four armed services since the military coup of 1973. Following the coup, publications sympathetic to the deposed Allende government were forcibly closed, printing equipment was destroyed, and personnel affiliated with the press and media were jailed, deported, `disappeared’ or killed. Radio and television stations were taken over by management appointed by the military so that news and opinion were disseminated in compliance with the wishes of the new regime…

“A leading journalist, Juan Pablo Cardenas, editor of the weekly Analisis, was sentenced after appeal on May 28, 1987 to 18 months night-time imprisonment on charges of slandering the President in a series of articles which had appeared in his magazine the previous year.

“The editor and assistant editor of the weekly Apsi were arrested and jailed in August 1987, and a satirical issue of the magazine was confiscated…

“The Chilean government employs many different methods in punishing the expression of dissenting views. On Nov. 28, 1986, 14,000 copies of the latest book by Gabriel Garcia Marquez were burned on arrival at the port of Valparaiso…”

During the 1980s, the special interests of the Military Mission of the Chilean Pinochet regime were represented in Washington, D.C. by the lobbying firm of Anderson & Pendleton, which also represented the special interests of China Airline Ltd. and the Federation of Japan Tuna Fisheries Cooperative in Washington.

(Downtown 9/1/93)

[Note: Since I’m taking a summer blogging break, I won’t be blogging here again until the end of July. But in the meantime: Keep The Faith!]

CIA's September 1973 Chilean Military Coup Revisited

As partially dramatized in the 1980s Costa-Gavras film Missing, about 20,000 Chileans were killed and 30,000 were arrested by the CIA’s Chilean military in the weeks following the September 11, 1973 coup in Chile.

In an essay that appeared in the 1978 book Uncloaking The CIA, titled “The Facts About Chile,” the widow of Chilean President Salvador Allende—Hortensia Bussi de Allende—stated the following:

“The chapter concerning CIA and North American imperialist intervention in Chile is by no means closed…Each day we know of new facts that…have been hidden from the North American people…It is necessary that these so-called `secrets' be known…I ask the people of the United States to insist that the…responsibility of the U.S. government for the fascist massacre that exists in Chile be made known and denounced…

“In September [1973], ships from the U.S. Navy arrive in Chilean waters to participate with the Chilean Navy in the joint maneuvers called `Operation Unitas.’

“At the same time, 32 U.S. observation and battle planes land in Mendoza, Argentina; 15 of the planes leave 48 hours after the coup. Simultaneously 150 North Americans described as `specialists in air acrobatics’ arrive in Chile.

“On Sept. 9 [1973], President Nixon is informed about plans for the military coup in Chile.

“On Sept. 11 [1973], the military coup takes place. The Popular Unity government is overthrown; President Allende is murdered and a fascist dictatorship is installed.

“The fact that the U.S. warships from the Unitas maneuvers were standing by ready to help in case they were needed in carrying out the coup is disclosed.

“Another fact is revealed…: namely, that on the day of the coup a WB-575 plane was operated in Chile by Majors V. Ouenes and T. Schull from the U.S. Air Force. The plane was a flying electronic control station, servicing to coordinate the communications of the putschists.

The German magazine, Neue Berliner Illustrierte of Dec. 25, 1973, states that it has a confidential U.S. Army document, taken from a vault at Fort Gulick, Panama, outlining a plan to destroy the Popular Unity government. The U.S. plan revealed in Germany has characteristics very similar to the events of Sept. 11…”

In another essay that appeared in Uncloaking The CIA, titled “The Case of Chile,” Adam Schuesch and Patricia Garrett also described the U.S. role in the Sept. 11, 1973 Chilean military coup:

“Evidence published in Argentina suggests that the planes actually used in the precision bombing attack on the presidential palace were U.S. planes using `smart bombs’ and piloted by foreigners. At the same time units of the U.S. Navy were stationed off the major port, Valparaiso, ostensibly to participate in joint naval exercises. In fact, U.S. Navy personnel played a key role in communications coordination during the coup.

“…What is important about the U.S. intervention in Chile is the preparatory phase. Without active U.S. financing, training and supplies, the coup could clearly never have been successful…The U.S. involvement in the overthrow of the democratic government of Chile is a serious warning for United States citizens. The investigations of the CIA have shown that the people behind the Chilean coup have few scruples about similar activities in the U.S. Chile teaches us that it could happen here.”

(Downtown 9/1/93)

U.S. Media Coverage of CIA's 1973 Chilean Military Coup Revisited

In their book Unreliable Sources: A Guide To Detecting Bias In News Media, Martin Lee and Norman Solomon described how much of the U.S. Big Media reported on what happened in Chile in September 1973:

“Passive phrases and gloss-over euphemisms were invoked by some U.S. reporters in writing about the 1973 military coup in Chile. It was often said that Chilean President Salvador Allende `died’ in the presidential palace, when he was murdered by the armed forces. According to the New York Times, Allende’s policies caused `chaos’ which `brought in the military.’ This obscures the fact that the U.S. government and corporations like ITT were instrumental in fomenting chaos and backing the coup. The notion that `chaos’ prompted the Chilean military to move in and restore order implicitly downplays and neutralizes the brutality of the coup, in which tens of thousands of people were killed, tortured and `disappeared.’

Martin Lee and Norman Solomon also observed that “CIA propaganda planted in the Chilean newspaper El Mercurio played a crucial role in setting the stage for the U.S. engineered coup that overthrew the democratically-elected government led by Salavador Allende" in 1973.

(Downtown 9/1/93)