It's been referred to as health reform legislation but it should really be called anti-health crimes legislation.  Because what we have in America is a medical industrial complex that operates like a crime syndicate.  

Big Pharma has a nasty habit of manufacturing its research, not just its drugs.  It changes one molecule in an anti-depressant to save it from the threat of generics, calls it a breakthrough and continues to charge you a fortune for it. 

Not exactly the kind of ingenuity that America is known for, is it? Actually, it's precisely the ingenuity that America has become known for.  Look at the auto industry and the energy industry, not just the health care industry--public and private policy has one mantra--make money, not progress.  It's a mentality that is counter to creating anything cutting edge, counter to sustaining anything that is world leading.  

It generates cash, not vision.  

Corporations and government have colluded in this big money, small idea system and it is rapidly destroying our economy.  Our elected representatives are essentially corporate sales representatives.  

But getting back to the mob that owns the health care industry:

Health insurance companies practice rescission.  And we all know how the scam works;  get consumers to pay skyrocketing  premiums for years and when they really need coverage for a serious illness, deny it and drop them completely. Then deny them coverage for the rest of their lives.  

To maintain its stranglehold on Americans, they behave like one giant industry, not like small private companies that compete fairly and offer innovative products for consumers.  

There is no need for a free enterprise when you have a really well-oiled criminal enterprise. 

That brings us to the virtue of a public option.   (Well, virtue if you're one of 300 million American citizens.  If you're a corporate citizen, it's a major problem because it would really destroy the criminal enterprise.)  

The primary purpose of a public option is to provide Americans, all Americans, fair affordable access to health insurance.  And it has to be large enough and influential enough to compete effectively with private insurance.  

But therein lies the problem.  

It means that the private insurance industry would have to compete.  And competing has become un-American.     

That's precisely why, for the White House, the public option has become optional.  
Following in the footsteps of anti-visionaries Kent Conrad and Chuck Grassley, President Obama is now pushing consumer owned non-profit cooperatives, and many believe these cooperatives will lack the negotiating power of size to effectively lower prices.  

Exactly.  

That's the idea.   It reflects America's new rallying cry:  

Never never inspire competition.   

That deal that the White House apparently cut with the Pharma industry is starting to make sense--get the industry to agree to a meager $82 billion in cost cutting over 10 years and promise not to give a not for profit entity the power to negotiate.

The result?  No real competition.  No real innovation. 

What we have now, it seems, is a Democratic majority that represents the corporate minority. 

And when it comes to our health and well-being, that is a crime.  

A crime against humanity.  

This isn't a matter of splitting hairs, as others would have you believe.  

In the next eight weeks, there are only two kinds of legislation that our reps and Senators will be busy crafting:

Pro health crime.  

Or anti-health crime.   

I support anti-health crime legislation.