Going for the Gusto

No healthcare system can hold up against greed.

No innovation can stand up against greed.

No reform can stand up against greed.

Greed kills all.

Greed is the mother of death.

Corporate greed is the biggest  mother of all.

Sensible reforms to healthcare corporations involve the following acknowledgements, epiphanies and measures:

1. CEO pay must be fixed.
2. Stock option packages for corporate executives, board members, consultants or anyone else must be banned.  Such packages represent theft.
3. Corporate profits must be controlled as in a utility. The purpose of the corporation is to add value to society – not rack up profits.
4. Healthcare is not a place to get rich.   Can’t handle that, Bub?  Go make televisions.
5. Healthcare corporations may not own other corporations or companies.  We aren’t going to allow a small group of men in Poughkeepsie to control the lives of one hundred million people.
6. Board member pay must be limited to a pauper’s salary to ensure that the board member is involved for honor not wealth.
7. No board member may sit on a board of another company of any type.  The era of the professional board member is over.  
8. Half the board members must come from and be fully educated within that immediate community.  This is done to prevent carpetbaggers from elite universities from hijacking a wide number of corporations so as to institute their politically correct agenda which has nothing to do with helping people and everything to do with feathering their own nests.
9. Board members may not place their board membership on their resume nor promote themselves to the public as having sat on the board except for the purpose of delivering factual information for the public good when asked.  This is to prevent guru-ism.
10. No board member nor his company nor his wife’s company nor any one connected with the board member (or his wife) three generations forward, backward or laterally may do business with the corporation.
11. Healthcare corporations may not hire professional lobbyists.  Healthcare corporations are not people; as such, they have no sense of shame.  Shame does not necessarily kill greed, but, short of economic collapse, only shame can kill greed.
12. Healthcare corporations may not be publicly traded in the stock market.  It is the whooping it up by television cheerleaders when stocks go higher that entices CEOs to further maximize profits.

There is little point to making any change in healthcare unless greed is limited.

As long as people continue to “go for the gusto”, we are sunk.