Perspectives in capitalism

The cheap tricks private health insurance companies sometimes use to screw the rest of us... This one is called 'rescission'.

A House oversight subcommittee took a close look at a particularly shameful practice known as “rescission,” in which insurance companies cancel coverage for some sick policyholders rather than pay an expensive claim. The companies contend that rescissions are rare. But Congressional investigators found that three big insurers canceled about 20,000 individual policies over a five-year period — allowing them to avoid paying more than $300 million in medical claims. The companies typically argue that the policyholders withheld information about pre-existing conditions that would have disqualified them from coverage. But the subcommittee unearthed cases where the pre-existing conditions were trivial, or unrelated to the claim, or not known to the patient. When executives for the three companies were asked if they would be willing to limit rescissions to cases where the policyholder deliberately lied on an application form, all said they would not. This tactic will not be ended voluntarily.

Subtext

A brief tour on the origins of anti-Americanism from a book review of 'In Defense of America', by Bronwen Maddox.

A widely held belief among the liberal intelligentsia, both in the states and in Europe, is that anti-Americanism began under the second President Bush. History tells a different story. Take France, for example. Charles de Gaulle, the most popular political figure in recent French history, staked his presidency on driving a wedge into the American-led NATO alliance during the Cold War’s early years (it was only last month that France finally rejoined NATO’s military command structure). Anti-Americanism goes back to before the founding of the United States; it’s not just a political disposition, but also a theoretical premise based upon deep-seated feelings of historical envy and opposition to capitalism—not to mention cultural snobbery. Another cause, Maddox notes, is the simultaneous decline of Europe alongside America’s international ascendance. No matter what America does, she suggests, it’s unlikely completely to eradicate this inherent European mindset.

From here.

Image shows David Choe's artwork. He is a muralist and graphic artist whose solo show at the Chaoyang Liquor Factory Gallery in Beijing China titled “Death Blossom”, opened April 4th.

Readings

"Mankind made a Faustian bargain as soon as he invented his first technologies, including the bow and arrow. It was then that human beings, instead of limiting their birth rate to keep their population in step with natural resources, decided instead to multiply unchecked. Then they increased the food supply to support this growth by manipulating those resources, inventing ever newer and more complex technologies to do so.... The end result of a totally efficient technological exploitation of Nature would be a lifeless desert: all natural capital would be exhausted, having been devoured by the mills of production, and the resulting debt to Nature would be infinite. But long before then, payback time will come for Mankind." - The Spirit of Earth Day Past talking about limits to our voracious consumptive practices to Scrooge 'Nouveau' McDuck (a postmodern Ayn Rand capitalist)

- from a book the is apt for the times - a discussion of debt titled Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth by Margaret Atwood