Insurance racket may silence cannon

A few miles from here, at Highlands High School in Fort Thomas, Kentucky, they have a tradition: Every time the school's football team scores a touchdown, a cannon goes off.

Even folks who don't care about school athletics enjoy the cannon. It's artful expression, much like my Fourth of July displays of the '90s.

But last Friday, as a man was loading the cannon, there was a freak accident that blew off 2 of his fingers. This has failed to stem the public's fascination with the cannon, and many local residents still dream of joining the crew that fires the device.

It seems that the only party that wants the tradition stopped is the school district's insurance carrier. Whether the school system keeps the cannon depends entirely on what the insurer dictates.

What happened last Friday was a tragic but isolated event. This is the first injury that's been reported in the cannon's 40-year history.

In school systems all over America, children get seriously injured just going to school. I know of several cases just in my area where students have had their entire lives destroyed by classroom accidents. (Most of these were the school system's fault.) Are insurers going to tell schools to stop making kids come to class because of this?

This story highlights the larger issue of the insurance industry making decisions for everyone else - a form of corporatism. Just like how health insurers make decisions that doctors should be making (a practice that results in the deaths of patients), the insurers in this story are making decisions that should be made by folks who know something about cannon safety.

Instead, however, the decision is being made by insurance companies whose field of expertise isn't cannons, but crunching numbers to protect the bottom line.

People are conditioned to toe the insurer line. Personally, I think that if the school's insurer won't let it keep the cannon, it ought to find a different carrier. But because corporatism is the national cult, too many just accept insurers' decisions as incontrovertible truths.

If we wake up in a sterile world with no recreation allowed, the insurance industry will be largely to blame.

(Source: http://nky.cincinnati.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/AB/20081216/NEWS0103/312160098)