| October 23rd, 2005 |
You'd think nothing Kaiser does would surprise me anymore, but this astounds me:
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-newkaiser23oct23,1,792286.story?coll=la-headlines-business
Interesting how Kaiser can just sidestep any problem, deflect all responsibility, by accusing the complainer of "vengeance". Doesn't just the presence of that kind of anger suggest Kaiser might be doing something profoundly wrong? How did the character slam of being "vengeful" become more viable than corporate responsibility? I think part of the problem is that it's easy to slap a character label on an individual than an abstract corporation. You never hear about Kaiser seeking "vengeance" against aggrieved patients, but that's what they are doing when they use their lawyers and their PR department to "destroy" the aggrieved person. I don't use the word "destroy" lightly: that word is taken from a Kaiser presentation to help their physicians deal with medical malpractice. You better believe Kaiser leadership has met with their "issues management" team and planned to "destroy" a person for having a complaint against them. This is double injustice: first to do harm, and then to destroy the person for trying to get the problem addressed.
Kaiser doesn't think twice before accusing this woman of "vengeance" because they can get away it: they *know* that character slurs work assymetrically - they can be used to abuse and crush an individual, while the same labels can't be applied to corporations. The corporate identity provides a teflon shield for real people making decisions.
If I've learned one thing in the past year, this is problem is fundamental to the legal system. People used to be taught to avoid rhetorical tricks in high school: using personal slurs, loaded words, etc. was supposed to decrease the effectiveness of an argument, since these are just statements of opinion and tend to imply that the person who attempts this doesn't have very much respect for their opponent's intelligence. I always thought of the legal system as an arena of rationality and fact, where an attorney would lose points for attempting emotional manipulation. However, in the last year I've learned that this is normal practice for attorneys - and apparently an effective one. I don't understand why nothing is being done to discourage this. Isn't it a bigger problem when this person who has suffered a tremendous loss, without her own big PR department, can be discouraged from seeking justice (and in this case improvements in the system that would benefit all of society) just because of the threat of publicly being painted as seeking "vengeance"? As long as this situation is allowed to prevail, corporations will be able to run roughshod over individuals. Regular people will face profound harms for trying to get wrongs addressed, and as long as corporations win with such tactics, they will have no incentive to change.
I have to add that allowing HMOs to operate with such large reserves is funding their current above-the-law and to-hell-with-the-little-people stance.
I'm going to follow this case and record every demeaning name Kaiser calls this poor woman, including those implied through the use of words with heavily negative connotations. Maybe they just need someone to spell it out for them in a simple key message.
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