Company Magna Analysis

After the United States Supreme Court's ruling in the case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission is gave large companies and corporations the right to utilize their own general treasuries for campaigning purposes. Although this creates competitive elections, it also opens up the floodgates for ethical dilemmas for corporations wishing to get involved in election process. Now that corporations are allowed to get involved in the election process, these corporations now have a large amount of influence on the outcome of future elections. However, this can pose a problem. Just because corporations possess the ability to influence elections does not mean they will use this influence for the betterment of society. It is an undeniable fact that corporations have their own social, economic, and political goals. Many times these goals come in conflict with what is best for society. With the upcoming elections, the issue of healthcare reform creates a divide between the goal of insurance companies and the goals of society. Insurance companies are obviously opposed to the idea of a nationalized healthcare system because of how it will negatively impact their profit margins, but not passing such legislation will significantly hinder the health care industries ability to provide high quality health care. Therefore, the ethical dilemma is whether it is right for a corporation to sacrifice the goals of society and only try and obtain their own personal benefit.

In order to understand why this is such a significant ethical dilemma, we need to gather and discuss the relevant facts related to this issue. The framework for analyzing the issues are formed by assuming the mindset of a member of the board of directors for the large insurance company Magna. It is clear that Magna, along with other insurance companies are opposed to the passing of health care reform. It would negatively affect their profit margins, a serious reason why they would be opposed to the reform. Some of the issues a member of the board of director would have with the health care reform include, a government insurance plan that would directly compete with private health insurance plans, more premium regulations, make insurance more affordable for Americans, and preventing insurance companies from denying coverage to individuals with "pre-existing" medical conditions. All of these policy aspects combined create many barriers for health care companies to maximize profits. Although it adversely affects companies like Magna, it would positively impact America's health care industries ability to provide health care to Americans. Manga's approach to prevent the healthcare reform to pass is to prevent Seneator Hill, a big proponent for health care reform, from being re-elected. The main target for the insurance companies is Senator Hill, who is running for re-election, and he is representing the viewpoint of majority of his continuants. Approximately, 55% of the people Senator Hill represents agree that the health care reform should be passed. In order to achieve this goals, the insurance companies would use their general treasury to pay for a media blitz to highlight negative references to Senator Hill's candidacy, in hopes she does not get reelected.

The above facts are the main facts that should be considered when applying ethical principles in order to decide what Magna should do. If we apply the idea of utilitarianism, which stands for adopting the principle of the greatest good for the greatest number, we would see that funding these media blitz would be unethical for a couple of reasons. Initially, this bill would positively benefit the majority of Americans by easing access to insurance, decreasing premiums, and regulating insurance companies. This not only positively benefits uninsured Americans, but also insured Americans, as well as benefits the health care industry. Health care workers would have to deal with less red tape when treating uninsured patients, allowing them to maximize their goal of providing high quality health care to as many Americans as possible. Thus if Magna were to actively try and prevent Senator Hill from being re-elected from office, they would directly be preventing an act that would benefit the greatest good to the greatest number of people, thus making this act unethical. The company goal of maximizing profits only benefits the executives and employees associated with the company. The benefit of a higher profit maring, or maintaining the already high profit margin, only provides a benefit to a small number of people. This makes placing company goals ahead of society's goals unethical. Furthermore, if we apply the philosophical approach of deontology we see that there is more information needed