(Letter to the Editor - Graphic Illustration/MetroCreativeConnection)

Defining greed as the desire to acquire resources makes everyone at least moderately greedy because humans need resources to survive. All politicians, however, are more than moderately greedy and most are greedy to the extreme. It is these excessively greedy individuals who control our lives, directing our energies and resources in ways which always end up benefiting them more than us.

Take Medicare, for example. There is no reason for the participation of private insurance companies in this system of providing health insurance to the retired — other than the fact that they were able to induce (bribe) our national representatives into giving them a slice of the pie.

Under the current system, Medicare determines the cost it will pay for all health goods and services provided by hospitals, doctors, pharmacists, and drug companies. All those providers agree to accept that determination because to refuse would eliminate millions of clients.

Medicare then pays 80% of that cost for all its Medicare participants. If the participant has agreed to pay separately for supplemental private insurance, the private insurance company pays for the remaining 20% at the prices determined by Medicare. Medicare recipients, therefore, pay a premium for the Medicare coverage and another premium for the private supplemental coverage, from which premium the private company derives a tidy profit.

So why is private insurance involved in this system? Since Medicare does all the work, shouldn’t it simply charge an adequate premium and provide 100% coverage? The answer is that our national representatives worked out a deal with the insurance industry in exchange for a taste, a little extra campaign contribution, for their votes.

This is the way our government works. It’s better than outright bribery (although sometimes that happens) and, as long as politicians are able to work out their side deals in secrecy, it will never change. There is a solution though.

The Romans called them tribunes. They were people elected to uphold and defend the rights of the plebians — the common people — against the patricians — the rich. America needs a national tribune — a person, and adequate staff, appointed by the president for, say, ten years whose job is to inform the people of the chicanery and self-serving practices of their representatives. The tribune couldn’t make or undo laws but only investigate and expose the selfish behavior of our senators and representatives. Under such public scrutiny, our representatives might skim a little less.

Patrick Radcliff

Marietta