Constitutionality of the Corporate State

Arguably the idea of constitutionality is a difficult one when it comes to understanding a private company, private corporation, or private insurer. The policy of the private corporation in the US is ideally that of free enterprise and to make a profit. However in this time of corporatocracy free enterprise has given way to greed which raises the question, just how constitutionally defendable is the private sector?

Now please understand, I am not a politician, nor am I a lawmaker. My understanding is simply that of someone who has read the constitution and has taken it for its word, not out of interpretation, but in its literal statement. As my American Political Thought professor said, as I asked him this, "A Private Corporation cannot be considered under the terms of constitutional or not; Only laws passed, supplied, and enforced by the government can be looked at in this regard." But would that not imply the laws that protect such companies as CIGNA and AARP who routinely deny coverage to people only pursuing their 14th amendment rights, though unknowingly, not break the very foundation of the constitution and its protections of the people?

Let us, for a moment, examine the reality of the current methods that we prescribe to for our health care and means of paying for it. Within the current system we have two basic methods of discourse, one of the old practice; where one would pay out of pocket for the expense of treatment, quid pro-quo, the other of a new practice, through a middleman to which a promise in contract is made for a periodical payment of which that money is then divided, one for payment of service and the other of possible future payments towards medical care. In one sense both methods seem plausible, especially since large surgical procedures which can cost far many times more than the out of pocket expense a general visit would cost can and do arise. In this simple state of policy and method, constitutionality is without infringement. Of course also in this simplified form one can see an invariable deficiency in the latter's viability. Why would one pay into a system under contract for a possible future illness, when one could save the same supposed amount that the middleman is saving for just such an event, on their own? Surely there is some draw to this middleman that is called the insurance company? And certainly there is; the middleman acts as an insurer that that money saved towards possible future medical bills will be there for that very use. The contract is of utmost importance here, there very statute of trust which bonds the insured to the insurer. Simply the exercise of paying more into an insurance system is a device meant to ensure the availability of monies paid into the system, and its security.

This is all well and good considering when insurance companies such as CIGNA and AARP first started. Over a century ago banks were not trust worthy, they were not reliable. Many banks disappeared all together during the Great Depression taking with them the monies placed in their care. Of course a century ago, a doctor's visit was hardly the expense it is now, nor did they have the extensive number of specialists, practices, and technology now needed to furnish such a profession as medical care. So what went wrong? Why has such a simple system of ensured availability become a matter of profits and determent from becoming ill?
Well for starters it is the very medical care system that has some fault. No doubt we have made great strides in medical care, prolonging life, saving lives, and expanding our understanding of the human condition, mentally, physically, and socially. Yet this was at a cost; doctors are now remote and separate from their patients. They no longer see patients as people in need, but rather one problem to solve after another as many more patients are seen per doctor, or worse they are seen as cash cows. And in a climate of social stigmas, where one wrong move, one fallacy, one instances of human error can result in millions of dollars of loss for the doctor, this decorum of diaspora has only charged the middleman with a greater duty, and a more lucrative status. Consider the expense of a doctor's visit now, versus that of a century ago. Today the figure for just a checkup can be as costly as one thousand dollars, a century ago, often it was never even a charge, and if so maybe a hundred dollars at most, not to mention the doctor would come to you, not the other way around. A surgery to save a person's life today can be in the tens of thousands and even hundreds of thousands of dollars, a century ago at most a few thousand and that is of the highest luxury. So in part, the very nature of the medical care system is to blame, it has become a system of greed, a profiting engine designed to maximize income off of the illness and suffering of the unwell.

This of course leaves a gaping hole to fill for the middleman. His profits are now divested into the surgeries and treatment of the ill; paying exuberant amounts of money to doctors, cutting into his profits and wiping out the majority of saved monies garnished from the insured. So what is he to do? Raise the costs and fees to make his profits? Of course this works for a while, but then his greed comes into play. How to make more profits off of those he is in contract with? Shift the burden to the old system of course. No longer will the middleman cover conditions he did not know of at the time of the contract being signed. No, that is not fair, had he known he would never have agreed to the current terms of the contract he has with the insured. Why, of course the money is still there for any other condition that develops during the time the contract is respected, but not for past injuries or illnesses. Yet this ideology did not satisfy his greed, no, so he brought in other middlemen. Some of whom had different means of contract, some competed against him, and others joined in likeness to him. And all the while their greed grew, push through new terms, create new contracts and new agreements in language that the insured cannot understand. Make it so that we can pick and choose what their money will go towards, and if they die, we can keep their money. And that is exactly what these middlemen did.
Now one would suppose, for a moment, that such a middleman, who is there by design to protect the money of those he insures and is paid to protect, would in the future pretense give that money back, save for that paid to him for his services of insurance, say if the insured decided to change their position. And this is how it was at first, but again greed came into play, the rising expense of medical care came into play, and again policy changed. No longer was the money paid into the company the property of the insured. Rather the system came to be as a mass pool. The insurer would collect a mass of money from all the insured and when one person required medical care the money would be taken out of that pool and used to pay for the care needed. Now this system does work, even today, so long as the insurer works to make sure the pool is available to everyone and everyone continues to pay into the pool. Credit Unions work on a similar principle as do some banks. However, like most banks, insurers decided to do something else with that money. Invest it into funding schema meant to bring in a profit to them. Naturally, what else is there to do with such a large sum of money sitting in some bank account set aside for someone who could become sick? Why it is unlikely they will, right? Let us use this money to make ourselves a larger profit, the middlemen said. Ah but look at the debauchery we have seen as of late when large corporations do this, in the stock market and otherwise. It is as lucrative as betting at a casino where you know the casino has 50 to 1 odds of beating you. So as the middlemen capitalized on the large pool of money, betting it here and there, and taking the profits (virtually) made for themselves, the pool would steadily decrease, even though money from the insured would still be paid into it. Alas one day one of these insured would become sick and require assistance. The contract the insured and insurers had with each other required the insurer to pay the medical care. This of course bit a large chunk out of the pool from which the virtual profits of the middlemen were coming. So what to do?- put into policy regulations that work against the insured so that a larger profit margin could be made. All the while leading the insured to believe all was well.

Naturally laws that protected the insured and those who enter contracts would have to be changed, the nature of such middlemen would have to become substantiated and a necessary part of the medical care system, and all in the name of greed. These middlemen needed to ensure themselves of their necessity, so that when the people became aware of their insurrection towards the contracts that had been made, the people they insured would not dare leave them. And this is what brings me to the constitutionality of Health Insurance companies in today's world.
A corporation, a conglomeration of people, devised to endeavor to provide service for the exchange of profit, is no different than an individual private citizen of the US. Treated in many respects in the same way, as a single entity, when it comes to areas of action towards those private citizens that defraud the corporation; a corporation that acts as a single entity can bring lawsuit towards another individual private citizen in cases of defraudment, in cases of illegal discompensation from under a contract, and so on. Yet it is illegal, now, currently, for a person defrauded by a Health Insurance corporation to sue, when life has been lost due to the Insurance Company's failure to provide the required payment under the contract held between them and those who they have insured. This is a fragrantly unconstitutional law under article four section two of the US constitution: "No person held to service or labor in one state, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due." If a corporation can act as a single body, as a private citizen, to bring suit against those private citizens they insure, then the same regard is fit for the private citizen to be capable of pursuing lawsuit in the same light.

Yet further under the same article but section four: "The United States shall guarantee to every state in this union a republican form of government, and shall protect each of them against invasion; and on application of the legislature, or of the executive (when the legislature cannot be convened) against domestic violence." These same private corporations dully act as an invasion force, not one of foreign domain, but rather one of political insurrection from within. By use of lobbyists who bribe and pay the politicians now elected to office, no longer are the states safe in their republic domain of governance, but rather are the follies of invasion through the private sector. Legislature is no longer the coveted coin of verdict of the vox popali, but the candid dogma of these companies and middlemen who seek only to further their own profit.
And yet, further still, these same laws that have directly infringed upon the private citizen any discourse for the failure of these middlemen to procure the required monies to save their own lives, they have directly violated all citizens' 14th amendment right, section 1, which reads as: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." Any states that have passed laws, or accepted federal laws that prevent the legal pursuit of retribution from those defrauded by health insurance companies in any area, including death from insufficient treatment due to refused coverage, directly violates the privileges of the citizens of the US, and deprive all people the chance of life, liberty, and property, in cases of illness.

Arguably, the validity of the constitutionality of these companies, as private organizations, is questionable. Yet I hold by their actions, as wholes or from the individuals within their quarter, their active role in directly disenfranchising those who would trust their lives to them, is a morally ineptitude. Their constitutionality inevitably is the matter of discourse here, and as private companies they are entitled to the same rights as a private person, but they are also required to respect the same laws and boundaries private citizens do. In violating those laws, and even reinforcing the creation of laws that are unconstitutional, they themselves have become unconstitutional institutions.