Yesterday I attended a Town Hall held by my congresswoman, Jackie Speier, conveniently located about a five minute walk from my house in Montara, California. There were few signs of opposition to health care reform until the first couple of questions. It seems the astroturfers have recalibrated their strategies to look less crazy, but their talking points were essentially the same. There were the arguments of "it costs too much", "what’s the rush?", "how can we expect the government to do something competently", and of course "death panels" and "socialism."
One by one Speier shot these down respectfully and articulately. Her most animated moment was when someone claimed that all of these politicians wanted to push this thing through who "hadn’t even read the bill."
"I’d prefer that you not insult my intelligence." Speier shot back. "I’ve read every word of it." Lot’s of cheers for that one.
The crowd was probably 90% liberal as would be expected in my "left coast" area, and responded with boos and groans for most of the idiocy, but the congresswoman pleaded in each case for the question to be heard and respected. There was nothing particularly out of the ordinary, or really unexpected for me- having read so many accounts of these meetings in red and blue regions.
At one point, however, Speier went off on an interesting tangent when discussing the out-of-control costs of our health care contrasted with other industrial nations. She brought up the point that one of the reasons health care costs so much is how over-utilized it is. Far too many people seek unnecessary medical treatment, via institutional care in hospitals and clinics or through the taking of medications they don't really need. She mentioned a pet cause of hers; the shocking number of incidents of hospital-borne infections, many of which result in death. One particular disease strikes roughly 100,000 people annually- can’t recall the name- and 20% of these people end up dead- of something entirely unrelated to the reason they sought care. Similar results occur from unneeded medications that people are somehow convinced they absolutely must have- due to the profit-driven ad campaigns of big pharma.
Though she was way too savvy to explicitly make the case, Speier’s comments seemed to be targeting one of the real downsides of capitalism. The profit motive generates a lot of waste through bombarding people with the idea that they need things they don’t . Obviously this goes way beyond health care, but it’s particularly pernicious because of the self-reinforcing cycle of waste in this case. We’re sold fatty fast foods which make us obese which make us need diet pills and anti-cholesterol medications, etc. We’re also sold fitness and idealized bodies while we’re ingesting everything imaginable to make this an impossible goal. As long as someone is getting rich the system is perfectly happy- until it breaks down in a big flabby puddle of goo. I think that’s roughly where we are now.
I’m not reflexively anti-capitalist. I recognize the great gains in science and technology that have occurred as a result of a capitalist, profit-driven economy, and my livelihood as a software engineer is directly tied to this system. But, just as the unfettered greed of Wall Street has to be regulated in order for the system to remain stable and efficient, perhaps some kind of regulation of advertising needs to be put in place. What you’re selling should have some minimal degree of value, and there should be some penalty for loading people up with crap they don’t need just to line your wallet.