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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Cogito who wrote (44584)	12/17/2007 3:33:23 PM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 543299

Did you really mean to say we need to "outsmart" the drug and healthcare companies? What I think is that we need to create a political environment in which their current positions are unsustainable, and to force them into serious compromises. Hmm, actually I believe both. Glad you put it that way. Creating a political environment in which universal health care has a great deal of clout because it polls well and because it elects presidents and members of congress with strong mandates is another way to "outsmart" them. But it also takes smarts in the negotiations. And conviction. And experience. And diplomacy.

To: Cogito who wrote (44584)	12/17/2007 3:44:51 PM
From: Sam	Respond to of 543299

What I think is that we need to create a political environment in which their current positions are unsustainable, and to force them into serious compromises. Yes, that's exactly what is necessary. But it happens relatively slowly, over time. That is why Nader and the people who voted for him were absurd--they simply ignored this fact of political life. The CEO of GE (Jeff Immelt) was on Charlie Rose a few weeks ago. They spent about 10-15 minutes talking about GE's environmental initiatives that this guy started several years ago. Immelt was, at the time and for a couple years thereafter, branded a "traitor" for his actions. But he said that traveling around the world, he saw that the public in other countries were becoming more attuned to the environmental concerns. He looked into the science behind it, thought it was sound, and began to develop the business, which now generates about $14b/year of revenue for GE, and is one of their fastest growing businesses. It wasn't that he became a tree-hugging environmentalist (quite the contrary), it was that his job was to protect the interests of his shareholders and make them money. He said, "Any CEO that doesn't know that you can't fight the public on matters like this shouldn't be a CEO." Or something like that. Undoubtedly some of what Immelt said was self-serving, but he made a lot of sense. Something like that has to be done with healthcare in this country. Certainly there are plenty of companies with a lot of financial power that would get behind it as well as plenty of individuals. The main people opposed to it would be doctors, the insurance and pharmaceutical sectors and many medical equipment sector companies--their salaries/profits will be cut. But there must be a way around them--they are a distinct minority. And even many doctors are fed up with the system we have.