Have it Their Way: Obamacare

December 10, 2011 Leave a comment

Recently, in my reading of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Philosophy: Everything Is Fire, a book included in the Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series, I came across the term “McDonaldlization”.

This term, coined by sociologist George Ritzer in his 1993 book The McDonalization of Society, defines how Ritzer sees the dehumanizing affects on society through the use of a fast-food restaurant’s operation methodology in many of our businesses and our institutions.  He tells us that the scientific methods affecting us are efficiency, calculability, predictability (standardization), control and irrational rationality.

“Most specifically, irrationality means that rational systems are unreasonable systems. By that I mean that they deny the basic humanity, the human reason, of the people who work within or are served by them.” (Ritzer 1994:154)

As a process characteristic of doing business, whether as providing a service or a good to someone, McDonaldlization makes sense. But it only makes sense up until the point the customer is served and satisfied by such process.  If the customer is not satisfied the process would need to adapt in order to satisfy the customer or the provider would likely lose his customer.  Within a free market business scenario both the provider and the receiver have choices and they are free to make them. Certainly it is no secret that many people eat at McDonalds or drink Starbucks coffee, receiving the products and service of these companies which embrace process characteristics described above. Others do not seek those products and services. They are free to choose otherwise.

With the Obamacare bureaucratic healthcare franchise coming to a town near you, you the patient will no longer have a choice.  Medical providers will no longer have a choice.  Both the provider and the patient must now provide and receive respectively what is calculated, predictable, rational and efficient. All of this process will be controlled by the Federal Government.  You are being told a lie that things won’t change regarding your health care under Obamacare.  They will change dramatically under this newly created centrally planned institution. You should know that Central Planning Officer (CPO), the health-care computer, will not let you “have it your way.”

In another article in the afore-mentioned book titled Kicking the Hornet’s Nest:  The Hidden “Section” in Every Institution the writer describes how man-made institutions tend to become corrupt to maintain and protect its own power under the banner of providing a benefit to others. Institutions “trumpet rationality” (scientific management), “boast stability” (inertia to change or to adaptation for individual needs) and “pronounce power” (we need power to protect you) and yet as we look at our U.S. Congress we see that “Institutions cannot simply be swept clean of their corrupt elements; rather, they tend toward corruption in their very being.  The injustice of the institution appears necessary for the maintenance of the institution.”  Institutions do not care about democracy. They do not care about your vote.

Institutions tend to serve those in power. When this happens you will be subjugated to the rationality of the institution for the protection of the institution. And, the institution will protect itself. Rationality has nothing to do with how you the patient feels. You will then know the irrational rationality of the institution. Do you understand this?

Now, do you also understand that Obamacare is a loss of choice?  Do you understand it is loss of liberty and, more importantly, of human dignity? Do you understand that you will now become codified just like medical diagnoses and services are now codified? Do you understand Obamacare is a loss of privacy?  And, of protection?

There are people right now who want all of your medical records on tap so as they say “to make things run more efficiently for the doctor/patient relationship.” We are headed to the McDonaldlization of health care via the institution of Obamacare.  Wait till the Obamacare franchise hits town. You will be Big Mac’d in thirty seconds or less.

Filed under Economics, essay, Health Care, Life As I See It, Non-fiction, Philosophy, Political Commentary, Politics, Short Piece, Writing Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

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