Health Insurers Lead Government To Death's Door

Why would an uninsured, broke, anti-government, libertarian --who needed expensive medical procedures--refuse government assistance?  He instead would struggle to pay a five figure medical bill out of his own pocket that would devour more than half his yearly wages.  The two main reasons the bill is so high is due in part to the government/corporate partnership within the healthcare industry, and the “un-supervisable” expertise of insurance company actuaries. 

The higher than competitive market price is a result of government subsidizing medical payments in the form of Medicare and Medicaid—providers continually increase prices and medical procedures they know a disinterested financier (the government) will pay.  It is no longer a competitive market when the government pays almost 50% of Americans' health care bill.  Ironically the above mentioned person is subsidizing a government-induced, non-competitive, quasi-monopolized health care system.

The private sector is perhaps even more sadistic.  Health insurance actuaries are paid well as the worlds' statistical masterminds.  No one else can understand what they do because it takes years of specific and complicated study to do it.  To oversee what they are doing would be like a preschooler supervising the scientist’s search for the God particle.  They minimize the risk of losing money by primarily insuring those who don't need health care, charging exorbitant rates to those who might, and rejecting those who will.  (It makes their job easier that the government already pays for 90% of this last, sickly, category through Medicare and Medicaid).  So with a lot of help from the government, actuaries played perhaps the most important part in the $12,000,000,000 of profit the five largest health insurers made in 2009.

Sincerely,

Lawrence Feriozzi

Corporate Censorship of the Public Dialogue.

Having just watched  Shadows of Liberty, several emotions developed within me.  The first emotion was disgust for our society that allows/abets the confinement of discourse occurring in our corporate dominated media.  Secondly, repulsion for The Rendon Group and others vocationally devoted to this corporate censorship, and finally, courage from those who stood up to these rotten figureheads in our society.

I often wonder why is there such a lack of substantive issues reported in our mass media, instead they report titillating stories akin to BDSM in pornography, (you know what it stands for).  These corporate led media conglomerates know they can keep us distracted and stupid with stories of blood and sex for the same instinctual reason we have rubberneckers and romance novels.

Our political discussions are the discussions they frame for us, big media no longer need to silence issues that threaten their ability to make a profit, they are simply never mentioned:  We have no idea what we are not talking about.

Sincerely,
Lawrence Feriozzi

Rush is Corporatist Tool

    The largest corporate donor's billions, their lobbying, and their writing of the complex anti-competitive regulatory laws—which is impenetrable to everyone except them—has defiled our republic.  It has done so by eliminating competitive capitalism at the highest levels.  The largest corporations in all of our mature industries have nearly become state-supported monopolies and oligopolies. 
     The biggest companies in oil, food production, media, education, health care, banking, credit cards, etc., have used Republican's loyalty to the idea of free-markets to perpetrate less competition in our economy.  Their use (abuse) of governmental power; tailored regulations, corporate bailouts, lax antitrust prosecution, will eventually destroy our economy. 
     Do influential Republicans like Rush Limbaugh see this?  Do they know they are a corporatist tool?

Sincerely,
Lawrence Feriozzi

Our Disheartening Dialog of Insignificance

    Want to make millions and be famous?  Just learn to be a good public polemicist*.  The highest paid in media and government are the most popular polemicist.  Like the rich, ancient Greek sophist Gorgias, our popular media figures and politicians motivate the masses for profit and power.  Their swift and sensationally reasoned rhetoric is crafted to capture our hearts--they know our minds will follow.  The best of the modern polemicist, like the playful Gorgias, know they are deceiving, the worst deceive themselves . In either case the polemicist's devotees are their source of notoriety and income; dependent on their popularity.  This wicked brew of cognitive dissidence has propelled our partisan, consumer-driven, codependent media and public officials into a destructive and disheartening dialog of insignificance.  Arguments, if every non-recursive, quickly become so.
     Disenchantment, disgust, and disengagement accrue in the non-polemicist: those who use non-ideologic methods for analysing and synthesizing useful ideas.  It seems our voice is drowned out by the cacophony of self-righteous opinion leaders who vehemently "know;" never mind their knowing is motivated by a fear of losing personal significance in a disheartening dialog of insignificance.

 *A polemic is defined as an aggressive attack on, or refutation of the principals or opinions of another.

Sincerely,


Lawrence Feriozzi

When Will We, Non-Elite, Understand This?

     Unlike all previous campaigns, I have not allowed myself to become even a little pregnant with a candidate's vision.  Why?

• Both will allow the growing anti-competitive corruption of state-capitalism and the demise of our economy; with the largest, politically connected industries bribing a larger and larger slice of our economic pie through:

1. Direct payments, (the military), 
2. Subsides, (to higher education, trillions for big pharmaceuticals & Bush's Medicare part D)
3. Regulations written by the industry leaders for their own competitive advantage, (Banking, Insurance, Finance) 

     All this while government investment in struggling industries of the future which have allowed for our economic power in the world, are not supported.  These hypocritical crony-capitalist note the "market should decide."  Perhaps their real concern is keeping their own piece of government pie safe?

     When will all of we non-elites understand this?  Tea Party advocates concerned with their taxes paying for bank bailouts and crony-capitalism, and Occupy Wall Street people rebelling against trillions of debt wiped out for the big players but anticipating a life of servitude to pay back their college loans making $7.25 an hour.

Sincerely,
Lawrence Feriozzi

"Just Insert This Amendment Into The Bill Tomorrow, and Be a Good Boy"

     Perhaps I am like the presidential candidates: I am most palatable and popular swaddling around with real, yet very unimportant questions, decisions, and actions; while the great city of Rome burns just off camera.  The largest and most important decisions and actions, say, to come clean about lobbying and campaign millions defiling the processes of democracy, are not seriously discussed, other than to acknowledge, minimize, and effectively dismiss as a real possibility for future action, of course, “It certainly deserves further discussion.”  The processes of a real democracy should loosen the collectives’ hold over our money and corrupted institutions.  Public unions, Too Big To Fail “private corporations” or more accurately, political collectives in finance, insurance, health, education, defense, energy, and others should get a swift kick off the public dole where they benefit their politically powerful institutions, in lieu of being effective institutions which benefit us, …the separated “us,” out in a burning city.  

     Is this not unlike a man, say myself, in a relationship with a girl, say my wife, where we discuss the bills that need to be paid today, the money we are saving, the next apartment we want to rent all while the largest decisions; for individuating through courageous decision and action, into something unique, responsive, and corrective to myself and others, are acknowledge, minimize, and effectively dismiss as a real possibility for future action?  “We should talk more about this if its so important to you.”   My personal collective would have me in support of the collectives’ best practices; producing and raising civil citizens in support of the collective. How shall I address the initial assumption?  Is my choice between a truer existence of vital life, isolation, then annihilation, and, a non-choice of species perpetuation 2.0? 

“To put me in this “whole” you imagine is to negate me.”  Kierkegaard to Hegel

I painfully anticipate your misunderstandings,

Lawrence Feriozzi

Life Is Better

   Life is much, much better than it used to be, within a larger perspective.  I know the economy might tank,... again, and we have false, elite-chosen, non-democratic choices for our next leaders but lets look at the bigger picture.  Only 150 years ago most of our lineage were struggling to get enough food to eat for the day.  Now I can get fat cheaply and listen to great music for the cost of an internet connection.
     We are humans, learning though trial and error.  We have made many mistakes that need major correction, but the general direction is toward a better life for more people in the world, with lots of exceptions.  Radically unjust oppression has been the rule since we "advanced" from bands and tribes to chiefdoms, growing more oppressive in state systems since Mesopotamia.  Nevertheless, given a couple thousand years and things are undeniably looking up.  Even if our American system doesn't last much longer as we know it, I think we will learn, people and leaders will become more responsible, and life will continue to get better for the generations to come, even if it doesn't for ours.

Sincerely,
Lawrence Feriozzi