1. Corporations and Public Health: Profits Before People
Martin Donohoe

2. Am I Stoned?
A 1999 Utah anti-drug pamphlet warns: “Danger signs that your child may be smoking marijuana include excessive preoccupation with social causes, race relations, and environmental issues”

3. Corporations Dominate the Global Economy
Almost 6 million corporations
90% of transnational corporations headquartered in Northern Hemisphere
500 companies control 70% of world trade

4. Corporations Dominate the Global Economy
53 of the world’s 100 largest economies are private corporations; 47 are countries
Wal-Mart is larger than Israel and Greece

5. The Stock Market
The top 1% of Americans owns 51% of all stocks, bonds, and mutual fund assets
Consequences of Differential Stock Ownership
Corporations are answerable to their shareholders
Governments are answerable (at least in theory) to their citizens (either through elections or revolutions)

6. Corporations
Internalize profits
Externalize health and environmental costs

7. Corporate Taxation
Corporations shouldered over 30% of the nation’s tax burden in 1950 vs. 8% today
Nearly 1/3 of all large U.S. corporations pay no annual tax

8. Corporate Taxation
Big business claims that U.S. corporations pay the highest corporate taxes in the world (35%)
FALSE: The rate actually paid, after foreign governments get their cuts, money sent to foreign subsidiaries, loopholes, etc. = 2.3% (U.S. Treasury Department)

9. Reasons for Inadequate Corporate Taxation
Corporate tax breaks/loopholes
Corporate welfare
Cheating and under-payment common
Offshore tax havens shelter capital

10. Ugland House, Cayman Islands 18,000 Corporations Registered Here

11. Job Creators?

12. Corporate Taxation
2004: Bush administration offered temporary tax holiday on foreign earnings
$300 billion in profit repatriated
92% went to dividend payouts, stock buybacks, and corporate coffers
Only 8% went to R and D, new factories, and hiring

13. Exorbitant CEO Pay CEO salaries up 759% since 1978
Average worker pay up 6%
The average CEO makes X the salary of the average U.S. worker ( X)
Mexico 45:1
Britain 25:1
Japan 10:1
US Military: 15-20:1 (top rank : lowest rank)

15. Corporate PR Tactics Advertising
Astroturf - artificially-created grassroots coalitions
Corporate front groups
Invoke poor people as beneficiaries

16. Corporate PR tactics
Characterize opposition as “technophobic,” anti-science,” and “against progress”
Portray their products as environmentally beneficial despite evidence to the contrary
Corporate espionage: spying, bribes

17. Greenwash Public relations / ad campaigns
BP invests $100 million annually in clean energy = amt. it spends annually to market itself as moving “Beyond Petroleum”

18. Sponsored Environmental Education Materials (Examples)
International Paper
-“Clearcutting promotes growth of trees that require full sunlight and allows efficient site preparation for the next crop”
Exxon’s “Energy Cube”
-“Gasoline is simply solar power hidden in decayed matter”
-“Offshore drilling creates reefs for fish”

19. Academics/Professional Organizations Affected
Increasing corporatization of academia
↑Private commercial funding of university research
Secrecy/Gag Clauses
For-profit colleges growing, marked by corruption, high interest rates on loans to the un- and under-qualified

20. Academics/Professional Organizations Affected
Dramatic decrease in tenured faculty, rise in administrators
Gagging of researchers at federal agencies demoralizing, can affect recruitment of quality scientists

21. The Media
5 corporations control majority of US media (down from 50 in 1983)
Extensive corporate-media links
American Council on Science and Health

22. Global Warming: Controversial?
Of 928 articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals, none were in doubt as to the existence or cause of global warming
Of 636 articles in the popular press (NY Times, Washington Post, LA Times, WSJ), 53% expressed doubt as to the existence (and primary cause) of global warming
Science 2004;306:1686-7
(Study covers )

24. Lobbying Approximately 40,000 lobbyists (12,600 full-time)
Estimates of return on lobbying range from $28 to $100 for every $1 spent

25. Lobbying
Federal lobbying groups spent 3.5 billion in 2010 (3.3 billion in 2011)
All single issue ideological groups combined (e.g., pro-choice, anti-abortion, feminist and consumer organizations, senior citizens, etc.) = $76 million (2010)

26. Top-Spending Industries, 2011 (Low Estimates)
Pharmaceutical industry - $236 million
Insurance industry - $158 million
Oil and gas industry - $146 million
Electric utilities - $144 million

27. Campaign Cash and Lobbying
Citizens United
Lobbying promotes international non-cooperation/isolationism

28. The alliance between GE Medical Systems and NY-Presbyterian Hospital

29. General Electric
Ranked by Forbes as world’s largest company (based on equal weighting of sales, profits, assets, and market value)
2011 revenues of $148 billion
Close to the GDP of more than 2/3 of U.N. member states
2011 net after-tax profits of $14 billion

30. General Electric
Makes household appliances, lighting, and medical equipment
Has built 91 nuclear power plants in 11 countries (including Japan’s Fukushima Daishii reactors)
Produces jet engines and military hardware

31. General Electric
Charles Wilson (CEO of GE pre- and post-WW II; helped oversee U.S. military production during WW II):
“The revulsion against war…will be an almost insuperable obstacle for us to overcome. For that reason, I am convinced that we must begin now to set the machinery in motion for a permanent wartime economy.”

32. General Electric Operates coal-burning power plants
Major releasers of toxic mercury
Produces nearly 40 technologies used in fracking

33. General Electric Operates a large financial services group
Responsible for over 50% of company’s profits in recent years
Owns a multi-billion dollar media empire
Including NBC (49%, Comcast – 51%), Telemundo, and Universal Studios

34. GE’s History
Conducted unethical human subject experiments on prisoners, involving testicular irradiation, from 1940s to 1960s
Intentionally-released excessive radiation from its Hanford, WA nuclear reactor in the 1980s, to determine how far it would travel

35. GE’s Record
Sued radiologist who brought to light dangers of GE’s contrast agent, Omniscan
Causes nephrogenic systemic fibrosis (FDA black box warning)
Ordered to pay $11.4 million to Bracco Diagnositcs for falsely/misleadingly claiming that its x-ray contrast agent Visipaque was superior to BD’s Isovue

36. GE’s Record America’s largest corporate polluter
116 Superfund sites nationwide
Approximately 13 in NY

37. GE’s Record
Between 1947 and 1977, two of its capacitor manufacturing plants dumped 1.3 million pounds of PCBs into the Hudson River
Probable human carcinogens with adverse effects on liver, kidney, nervous system, and reproductive organs (EPA)
200 mi of Hudson = Superfund site

38. GE’s Record Eliminated 34,000 US jobs between 2000 and 2010
Added 25,000 overseas jobs over same period
One of nation’s top out-sourcers of jobs

39. GE’s Record
Cited by Human Rights Watch for “systematic workers’ rights violations” in the U.S. and abroad
Extensive record of tax violations, military procurement fraud

40. GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt 2011 total compensation = $21.6 million
Named “World’s Best CEO” in 3 separate Barron’s polls
On Board of NY Federal Reserve Bank

41. GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt
2008 – Named one of the “100 Most Influential People in the World” by TIME Magazine
Appointed by President Obama to his Economic Recovery Board
GE then became eligible, via a loophole, for ¼ of the $340 billion Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program (debt support)

42. GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt
Appointed by Obama as Chair of his outside panel of Economic Advisors and of his Council on Jobs and Competitiveness
On the board of directors of “The Robin Hood Foundation”!

43. GE’s Record Named “America’s Most Admired Company” by Forbes
Named one of the “World’s Most Respected Companies” in polls conducted by Barron’s and The Financial Times

44. Concerns About the Agreement between GE Medical Systems and NY-Presbyterian Hospital (2003)
Provides GE with financial incentives to promote high technology purchases
Hospital prohibited from purchasing more effective equipment from other companies

45. Concerns About the Agreement
Augments trend in academic medical centers to promote the use of expensive, high-technology care at expense of preventive care and public health measures
Highly reimbursable
Services may be redundant in certain locations

46. Concerns About the Agreement
Patients with developmental anomalies and cancers caused by GE’s pollution diagnosed with GE scanners and treated with GE-manufactured therapeutic devices, increasing GE’s profit

47. A macabre twist on “cradle to grave care”

48. Solutions NY-P should cancel agreement
Health care providers and organizations should condemn this alliance
Medical and ethical organizations should develop standards regarding future agreements

49. Health Insurance Industry
Dubious practices:
Delisting
Cherry picking
Pre-existing conditions
Often lower quality of care
High administrative costs
15-30% (vs. 2-3% for Medicare and Medicaid)

50. Health Insurance Industry
Large profit margins
Loyalty: shareholders (not patients)
Corruption

51. Pharmaceutical Industry
Influence over physicians through control of CME, gifts, research funding
Conduct seeding trials to alter prescribing patterns
Secrecy, statistical torturing of data sets, selective publication
Data mining of prescribing practices

52. Drug Company Malfeasance
The pharmaceutical industry is the biggest defrauder of the federal government, as determined by payments made for violations of the federal False Claims Act (FCA)
Accounted for 25% of all FCA payouts between 2000 and 2010
Defense industry – 11%

53. Pharmaceutical Industry
$240 million dollars spent on lobbying in 2011
1,228 lobbyists (2.3 for every member of Congress)
Revolving door between legislators, lobbyists, executives and government officials

54. Pharmaceutical Industry
Effectively lobbied and threatened trade sanctions against developing countries in order to prevent production and importation of much cheaper, generic versions of life-saving anti-AIDS drugs
Sneaky patent extensions / carve-outs

55. Drug Testing
2011: Florida Governor Rick Scott (R) issues executive order requiring drug tests on current state workers and new applicants
2011: Scott signs bill requiring drug tests for TANF program
Aid recipients responsible for cost of tests

56. Drug Testing Florida Governor Rick Scott Former CEO of Columbia/HCA
Fired after presiding over massive Medicare fraud that cost corporation $1.7 billion federal fine
Then set up Solantic (FL chain of emergency care clinics); transferred ownership to his wife upon entering statehouse
Solantic is in the drug-testing business

57. Solutions Restructure tax system
Punish corporate scofflaws with large fines and jail time
Increase enforcement budgets to combat corporate crime
Eliminate confidential legal settlements relevant to public health and safety

58. Solutions Living wage laws Work with corporations Healthy PR
Shareholder activism
Risks/benefits

59. Solutions: Fair, Representative Elections
Publicly financed campaigns and campaign finance reform
Proportional representation
Instant runoff voting
Halt disenfranchisement, overturn voter restriction laws
Vote

60. Solutions Activism / Letter writing / Protesting / Whistleblowing
Work in groups
Lobby legislators
Run for office

61. Solutions Increase funding of public education
Independent scientific review of school curricula
Prohibit use of sponsored curricula

62. Solutions
Establish safeguards re corporate involvement in academic research
Higher standards of journalism
Support alternative media

63. Solutions Augment and improve international aid package
0.9% of the total federal budget, 1.6% of the discretionary budget
Charitable giving approximately $250 billion/year (2.5% of income vs. 2.9% at height of Great Depression)
Sign, ratify, and adhere to major international treaties

64. Solutions Based on Precautionary Principle
Recognize nature’s net worth
Measure prosperity based on Genuine Progress Index or Global Happiness Index, rather than Gross Domestic Product

65. “All men are created equal” “Some people are more equal than others”
Declaration of Independence
“Some people are more equal than others”
George Orwell

66. Voltaire
“The comfort of the rich rests upon an abundance of the poor”

67. Hudson River, 2009

68. Primo Levi
“A country is considered the more civilized the more the wisdom and efficiency of its laws hinder a weak man from becoming too weak or a powerful one too powerful.”

69. “The first job of a citizen is to keep your mouth open.”
Günter Grass
“The first job of a citizen is to keep your mouth open.”

70. African Proverb
If you think you are too small to have an impact, try going to bed with a mosquito in your tent

72. Public Health and Social Justice Website
Contact Information and References
Public Health and Social Justice Website