Yesterday I wrote about the privacy of your personal information in the modern world. Another aspect of privacy, of course, is the privacy of not having anyone watching your every move, meddling in your private life, or even dictating every step you make. That was the specter raised by George Orwell in 1984.
In the contemporary health care debate, people are railing about "government takeover of health care" and express their fear of too much government in their lives. Maybe it's because Orwell wrote about government, rather than General Motors, Nestlé, or Shell Oil, that makes people more afraid of what government may do. Perhaps it's the example of now-defunct totalitarian states like the Soviet Union. (Yet these states are mostly defunct, and even the remaining ones are shifting away from total-control mode, realizing it doesn't work). Actually, I think the Orwellian threat could come just as easily from the "private" sector as from government.
The great irony of the healh care discussions at this time is that there's plenty of evidence available of extreme corporate power and the abuse thereof, yet the opponents of government "interference," (whenever they aren't cashing their social security checks or selling their "clunkers" in exchange for a government handout) seem oblivious to, or perfectly willing to accept, the equally insidious control that private enterprise exercises over their lives.
One of the clearest examples is near at hand, in that selfsame health care debate. Let me honest here: if you believe that so-called "public option" is really about the government making health care decisions for you, I think you've allowed yourself to be duped; you just haven't done your homework. It is no such thing.
Companies that have something to lose from lower prices in health care are spending millions to save themselves billions in profits. They're also engaged, like "Big Brother," in every aspect of the process; fighting a propaganda battle, bribing your Congressman to look the other way, denying existing problems, beavering away to shape legislation to their liking, making indefinite promises of future "savings" in return for guarantees that nothing will change. Oh, and today the Washington Post reports that roughly 94% of physicians have a "relationship" with at least one company in the health care industry.
Health care companies would like to convince you that government will "stand between you and your doctor," because they would hate for you to realize that currently, they stand in that position, limiting what they will pay for, denying treatments, charging whatever rates they want, tracking your medical problems and prescriptions, denying coverage for your "preexisting condition" (such as being human). They're in that position, and they love it. They'll be happy to distract you from thinking about the cost of health care, because higher costs, under current conditions, are not something they wish to control.
Is it possible Orwell had the right idea, but was 50 years too early, and was looking in the wrong place?
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