Mere Mention of the Name Marx Gets People's Blood Boiling!

Wow.

The blog below is the blog that was posted on the Huffington Post.

I was merely proposing the use of that one specific concept of "alienation" to see if that it would work in understanding how we can actually insure our health only to have coverage denied when we need that insurance.

The conclusion I arrived at was that somehow we lose ownership of our health when we insure it. So that's when I saw Marx's "alienation" at work. It dawned on me, we use the term "health insurance industry" for a reason!

Das Kapital is too long, too convoluted, so I ended up using the Manuscripts of 1844. I thought the model worked pretty well in talking about how our health has become externalized to a degree that it can be insured like cars, boats, houses, etc. Then we begin to understand that using our health as capital, the insurance companies make money. Using our health as capital, they make more money. So the insurance companies are the owners of our health, and not us!

Would I propose any type of Marxism for any part of my government? Of course not! I don't even know what that would be! But can we use Marx's thinking, his earlier ones that are less tainted by his political vision, to illuminate on some of the things that are happening, especially health care? Absolutely!

However, some people can't get past the word, "Marx," and are writing almost by the book criticisms of what they call Marxism. However, if you read their comments, what they mean is not Marxism, but some sort of Stalinism or Leninism, that is the Soviet style dictatorship, which had really no semblance to Marx's ideas.

Hmmmm. Some people are coming to my defense. This has been just very, very interesting.