greed

Tea Party Fights Corporate Abuse

R. Horton

The East India Company, chartered in 1600, was the first corporation in the modern sense. Members would invest capital, management would conduct the operations, and investors would receive repayment in proportion to their investments. For the first time, investors and mangers were separate persons. At this time, it was unclear who would be responsible for wrongs committed by the corporation.

As this and similar ventures developed, investors were increasingly separated from the actions of the corporations, and limited liability (investors could only lose the amount they invested in the corporation) became the norm by the end of the nineteenth century. This also made corporate immortality possible as corporations could outlive their owners.

The British East India Company (BEIC) rapidly gained economic power and exerted global influence. It formed the largest standing army in the world at the time, gained control of India and the surrounding islands, controlled the opium trade in China, and managed slave trading out of Madagascar. One-third of British parliament members held stock in BEIC, 10 percent of British tax revenues came from tax on BEIC tea, and the King depended on loans from the company. In exchange for these benefits to the British government, BEIC was granted many favors, including monopoly rights.

The company conscripted thousands of British for forced labor in Jamestown, a colony set up in America by BEIC. Eighty percent of these laborers died before completing their seven-year tenure. Because of its rapid expansion and competition from small colonial business, though, BEIC was almost bankrupt. It was able to overcome this setback with more favors from the British government, which expanded its monopoly and led to the 1773 Tea Act, lifting tariffs on tea and enabling BEIC to flood the market with cheap tea and destroy its competition.

This was the catalyst for the Boston Tea Party. During the Boston Tea Party, protestors dumped more than 90,000 pounds of tea into the harbor, which was then closed for more than a year and a half. This led to the battles of Lexington and Concord; as a result, America’s founders vowed to protect the United States from corporate power and corruption.

The Boston Tea Party is an enduring symbol of America’s popular resistance to the collusion of corporations and government against the interests of the people.

Information for this blog came from:

1. Christopher D. Stone, Where the Law Ends: The Social Control of Corporate Behavior (New York: Harper & Row, 1976).

2. Shelley K. White, “Corporations, Public Health, and the Historical Landscape that Defines Our Challenge,” in The Bottom Line or Public Health: Tactics Corporations Use to Influence Health and Health Policy, and What We Can Do to Counter Them, ed. William H. Wiist (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2010).

The Ethics of Medication

R. Horton2 Comments

Yesterday, I went to the doctor, and he prescribed medication for reflux disease. When I went to pick up my prescription, the cashier told me the pharmacy could not fill it until they received authorization from the doctor. I asked whether the doctor’s prescription was not authorization. It turns out, according to the pharmacist, that the insurance company will not pay for the medication without a written justification from the doctor.

Rather than needing doctor’s authorization, the insurance company was rejecting his authorization. So, I get no treatment for my reflux, which hardly seems fair, but the situation is exasperatingly complicated.

It could be that my doctor, under the influence of pharmaceutical reps, prescribed an expensive medication that is no more effective than cheaper alternatives. If so, it may be in the best interest of everyone, except the doctor and pharmaceutical company, to reject payment for an expensive medication that offers no additional benefits over other medications. Praise to the insurance company for holding the line on costs.

It may be that the doctor knows that the new and expensive medication is more effective and has fewer side effects than alternatives. He may have prescribed what he feels will promote my health and healing better than any other treatment available. In this case, all thanks go to my doctor, and the insurance company is really quite evil.

Or, it could be that the insurance company rejects any expensive treatment with the hope that patients will give up and find cheaper treatments or go without treatment. This, of course, might save money in the short run, although rejecting claims costs money in itself. Sometimes, rejecting a claim is more costly than simply paying it. the amount of staff time and resources tied up on this one prescription is enough to give one pause. The pharmacy says the insurance company won’t pay for the prescription, but I did not press them on how they know this. It is possible they simply consulted a list of preferred medications. It may be that they checked a computer database. Or, they may have actually made a phone call. Any of these options require employee time.

After determining that the drug was not a “preferred” drug, the pharmacy faxed a form to my doctor. If things go as planned, a member of the doctor’s staff will obtain a statement and signature from him before completing the form and faxing it back to the pharmacy. This is an inefficient system at best.

In this case, the patient, me, is going without treatment for reflux, which is causing real problems and can lead, if untreated, to serious problems such as esophageal cancer, which frequently terminates in death. So, who is to blame for the suffering of the patient? Greedy pharmaceutical companies? Doctors under the influence of greedy pharmaceutical companies? Greedy private insurance companies? Or pharmacists who raise problems when there is no problem? I really don’t know the answer.