President Bush’s reasons for vetoing SCHIP (State Children’s Health Insurance Program) are yet another example of the corrosive effect of the current economic theory of market fundamentalism that dominates U.S. policy domestically and globally. We heard it first from Ronald Reagan: “Get government off our backs!” It is consistently reinforced with the questionable premise that private enterprise is more efficient than the government. It is the belief that market forces work best and to everyone’s benefit when government gets out of the way. President Bush even resurrected the great bugaboo of the last century – creeping socialism – when he gave as one of his reasons that the bill goes “too far toward federalizing health care.”
Never mind the number of uninsured children who would be covered by this bill: an additional 4 million children over the already 6.6 million children who are already enrolled in the program. And this number of enrollees does not include all children in poverty in the U.S., nor does it extend coverage to legal immigrant children.
Never mind that the program will not be federal, but is a joint program of the federal and state governments, that is state-run and managed. The President also is concerned that SCHIP will siphon off some children who are currently insured by private health insurance companies. The number is amorphous. Never mind that the American Medical Association and trade associations for private insurance and drug companies support expanding SCHIP to cover more uninsured children. Nor does he allude to the reality that a primarily market-based approach to providing health care to individuals in the U.S. has been neither efficient nor comprehensive as the some 48 million uninsured attest.
But SCHIP is not the only example we have of our flawed commitment to privatization as the headlines in newspapers continue to reveal. The extensive use of private contract workers to manage many of the logistics of the horrific Iraq war is a reality too little known by U.S. citizens until yet another disaster happens, such as the killing of 17 Iraqis citizens by Blackwater Security Guards or the shooting of two Iraqi Christian women returning home from work by an Australian Security company. All in the employ, and therefore in the name of the U.S. We are now hearing from military spokesmen that the private security guards are thwarting U.S. efforts to create trust among Iraqi citizens.
Then we are consistently informed that the private contractors who provide supplies to the troops have overcharged for the services, or the building contractors have extensive cost over-runs not to mention shoddy workmanship and buildings which are uninhabitable when finished. The mammoth new U.S. Embassy in Iraq has postponed its opening indefinitely while a Kuwaiti contractor fixes a long list of problems. This delay will cost another $144 million. Our Iraq experience clearly shows that the private sector is not necessarily more efficient than government. One of the main difficulties is the lack of oversight and accountability of the private sector. Other obvious difficulties are that the private sector is a for-profit sector seeking all the profit it can possibly grab, and it appears that there is no cost too great for the U.S. taxpayers to pay to fund this war. The cost is in the trillions and rising.
The reconstruction of the U.S. Gulf Coast after Katrina illustrates the same gross failures of the government “getting off peoples’ backs and letting the market hold sway.” The list is long and depressing and the people who have been harmed by this approach are numerous. But someone is benefiting.
Isn’t it time that we raise our voices in protest and challenge this economic model that is demoralizing to people and depleting our resources to the benefit of a few? Private enterprise has its merits, but it demands checks and balances. The government has a responsibility to ensure the well-being and security of its citizens as well as being a good steward of our resources. The drive toward privatization evades that responsibility and erodes our sense of social solidarity in addressing the needs and problems of our people and the peoples whose lives we impact, such as the people of Iraq.
Posted by Maria Riley, OP - Senior Advisor, Global Women's Project.