Keeping corporations accountable

Again, from The Wall Street Journal earlier this week, there were two totally unrelated articles having to do with corporations and their responsibility to society.

The first has to do with a company, St. Jude Medical, creating heart defibrillators that had wires in them that burst out of their insulation so they ended up shocking the patients that had them. Here's the article and link:

St. Jude Riata Heart-Device Flaws Known for Years

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444223104578036752346768278.html?mod=e2tw

Nice, huh?

The thing is, the company sent out recalls on them but the doctors didn't report them to the patients, in most cases.

So say you had a heart defibrillator put in your chest and all of a sudden you started getting shocks from inside your body. Then, later, you find out your doctor just didn't tell you about it.

Real quick, there's two things about this.

First, you're angry--and likely scared as heck--that you have this thing you need to live in your body that your doctor put there years ago and it's giving you electric shocks no one can control.

That's bad enough.

Then, on top of that, it will continue to keep giving you those electric shocks until your doctor once again opens up your chest, disconnects it from your heart, takes it out and replaces it.

Here's the second article:

US Warns Motorists of Counterfeit, Faulty Air Bags

Ironically, it was right next to this, above story.

It seems people who work on cars have been replacing good, working air bags with ones that don't.

Sick.

People--mothers, fathers, sons, daughters--depend on their air bags to keep them at least a bit more safe in their cars, should they be in a car wreck, heaven forbid. They have some issue or problem with the bag, for one reason or another, depend on their local auto repair company to fix it and they put in one that isn't likely to work.

Again, fantastic. Fantastic in a sick, selfish, greedy, "free-market" Capitalism kind of way.

What this brings me to is that we, the people, the ones who end up in -these personally- and financially-exposed ways, need some kind of way to hold corporations and people responsible so if, in fact, these things happen, we are compensated for them and, just as importantly, there are punishments so others aren't tempted to cut their costs or to out-and-out cheat their customers and these types things don't happen again.

We're not shooting for a "perfect world" here by pushing for this. We're mere hoping and working for a more honest fair and working one.

So, if you think America really needs "tort reform" to help the country and get an keep our nation's company's costs down, you're badly, badly mistaken.

As a recommendation, if you haven't already seen it, go rent the documentary "Hot Coffee." (Link below).



It will really open your eyes.

Links: www.hotcoffeethemovie.com/