Over the summer, I made a blog post here in which I argued that health care reform was a handout to the capitalist class at large at the expense of the “health” care companies. If reform legislation went against the interests of the pharmaceutical or insurance companies, went my reasoning, it was only to drive down the insurance costs of other capitalist enterprises in less profitable sectors or to increase consumer spending (i.e., capitalist profits). While the state would indeed be stepping on the toes of some capitalists, this wouldn’t alter its character as the ideal personification of the total national capital,
to use Engels’s words (with my emphasis).
While I was clear that I considered meaningful reform unlikely given the money companies like Wyeth and Merck poured into Congress, it seemed to me at the time that any legislation would have to come at the expense of the “health” sector. Frank Ahrens over at the Washington Post’s Economy Watch says otherwise. He counts the health insurance and pharmaceutical companies, along with hospitals (most of which are for-profit enterprises in the U.S.), as the biggest beneficiaries of the health care reform bill. The stock markets seem to agree with Ahrens. After all, the insurance industry and the pharmaceutical companies just got 30 million new paying customers.
