We Pay More Here for Healthcare Because Money Rules Here to a Much Greater Degree

The Vox article linked below says a lot about what happens when the so called "Free Market" makes most of the decisions on what healthcare should cost in this country. And even as we pay more the outcomes one can expect here don't come anywhere near to justifying the outrageous prices (see here, here, and here).

But what can you expect when "Big Money" can game the tax code with "Inversion" strategies so that not only can they avoid paying taxes to a much greater degree, they can avoid the antitrust laws that would prevent ever more powerful companies from getting even bigger (as in the Pfizer/Allergan drug company merger).

And try as you might to reform tax law, or enforce antitrust legislation, "Big Money" always finds a way to get around, over, or just bull through such efforts over time. After all, they can afford to be patient, just as they can afford to keep many more employed fighting for their interests than the public sector can (why else would you always argue for smaller government even as you starve it with ever less taxation).

At some point, it seems to me, the rest of us are going to have to give serious consideration to the argument that a cost based economic operating model is just no longer viable. Not only because it puts too much power into the hands of too few players, or that it is actually obsolete, but because it really is toxic in so many ways to our health, as well as the health of the planet.

Think about it. Start talking to other people about it. Get them to do the same thing. It won't change otherwise.

America’s health care prices are out of control. These 11 charts prove it.

By Sarah Kliff and Soo Oh on July 19, 2016

Blocking These Insurance Company Mergers Would be a Good Thing...

...Given the Obama administration's spotty record on enforcing antitrust laws, however, one wonders whether the incentive here is really limiting corporate power; as opposed to, say, protecting the president's limited legacy of important legislation?

The reason for this is plain enough certainly. The Affordable Care act legislation is on thin enough ice as it is with regards to a few of the biggest players in the insurance world not wanting to play along, limiting profits as it does (oh those poor dears, making only modest money on a vitally important social need). Throw in a great deal more concentration of power in the industry and the prospects for the continuance of what was essentially a very good idea becomes even more problematic.

What this suggests, of course, is the Democratic party's continuing ambivalence towards truly limiting the power of "Big Money." Despite the lip service they give to it, as opposed to the Republicans outright worshiping, they know they still have to continue on with their secret love affair with it. After all, if they were really serious about it, wouldn't they have made a much greater emphasis of tax law reform (other than Hillary's own recent lip service -- see the same, first linked article, above)?

It was the practice of "tax inversion," after all, that made blocking the Pfizer/Allergan merger impossible, not to mention the collection of a ton of money that ought be owed to the government by a number of very large companies. Do you think Hillary will be making that issue a priority should she win the White House? Anything is possible certainly but the relative probabilities involved here wouldn't be much to encourage even a devout Liberal, much less the Progressives among us. And lets not even suggest there's a possibility that the other guy would take that issue on; despite all of that blather that a rich guy would actually help the powerless in this country.

The beatdown goes on I guess... Unless you started questioning the entire game itself. You know... Removing money, and everything that goes with it, as an issue in the first place?  Just a thought.

U.S. Moves to Block Health Insurance Mergers

by PETE WILLIAMS

Just in Case You Were Sceptical of the Rise of Sea levels Comming

The link below from Gizmodo indicates that Greenland lost something like a Trillion Tons of ice in the period of 2011 to 2014. And to give that some perspective check out this quote from the article:

 As geologist Hal Wanless of the University of Miami pointed out to me in a recent conversation, sea level was roughly 420 feet lower 18,000 years ago than it is today. At that time, atmospheric carbon concentrations were only 180 parts per million—100 ppm lower than they were at the start of the Industrial Revolution. Now, over less than two centuries, we’ve pushed the atmosphere permanently north of 400 ppm.

“That should be a huge red flag to people,” Wanless said. “That should tell people, hey look, we’ve really done it. We’re really going to initiate some serious ice sheet melt.”

Greenland Just Lost a Trillion Tons of Ice and Nobody Noticed

Maddie Stone

Preferential Treatment in Pyramid Scheme Prosecutions?

As the linked article below indicates, one has to wonder at why one company, Vemma Nutrition, which had only $200 million in yearly earnings, ended up being prosecuted for such Ponzi type operations. Another company, Herbalife, which is currently valued at $6 billion, was not.

The important thing to remember here is that the operating model used by both companies involved selling distributorships for the most part, as opposed to emphasising actual product sales which, as with the original Ponzi operation of not making money on actual investments, but just getting more investors to keep payments going, is the glowing icon of a pyramid scheme.

The old saying goes that money talks. One is left wondering whether, if the vocabulary concerns terms of the right denominations, it is also gifted of great persuasion as well. And if the regulatory process works in this fashion for pyramid schemes, what is one to expect of other financial rules oversight? As in fighting monopolies, insider trading, or price fixing?

Something to consider when you think about whether this country is truly governed by the rule of law. The laws are there of course, the problem becomes one of whether you can afford the right kind of persuasion.

A Tale Of Two Schemes And One Pyramid

They both sell nutritional products, and they both make their money mainly by recruiting new distrubutors. So which is the alleged pyramid scheme?

By Matthew Zeitlin

Heaven Forbid We Should find Something Helpful...

...That would take even a Small amount of their profits away. Worse that it would also make us feel good (literally and figuratively) in the bargain. Something that we could just grow in fact.

 It shouldn't surprise us of course. It all goes hand in hand with the idea that there should be no aspect of our lives that isn't a revenue stream for one conglomerate or another. Whether it be critical infrastructure, social interaction, or any form of personal need. If there's money to be made then it should be made... Just not by you so much though.

CHILL, DUDE

Why Big Pharma Is Fighting Legal Weed

33 diggs Washington Post Drugs

People are actually using marijuana as medicine, and pharmacuetical companies don't like that.

See Also:

'NO PURCHASE, NO POKÉMON'

In The World Of Augmented Reality, Who Owns Your Digital Space?

9 diggs PSFK Gaming

When a virtual space overlaps a real-world space, then whose space is it, and who controls what is created as a result?

The Commoditization of Science

One of the major collateral damage effects of information as both money and a commodity is that the science establishment here, and in other countries one suspects, suffers exactly what you'd expect when the process of finding useful, new, information becomes saturated with many of the contradictions that afflict society in general within electrified Capitalism.

The pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, within a context of wonder and curiosity, so that we can better understand, and appreciate, everything around us, is similar, I think, to the need of humans to interact socially in a host of more generally spontaneous, and organic ways; interactions that help us to not only better know our neighbors, but to also be able to find tolerant grounds for cooperation so that we have loving structure to live and grow within.

But then we throw money, and the absolute requirement for net gain, into all of the workings of our lives and suddenly you have a toxic kind of abstraction in not only what motivates to make choices every day, but also structures the forms of interaction that take away any pretext that there should be deeper kinds of needs that ought to be a part of what motivates us. Here all that matters is a ledger sheet of bottom line logic; a logic that dictates that the only question you should be asking yourself all of the time is whether what I do next will result in something that will profit the capitalizer, and myself, so that further profit can be obtained.

You need only read what the scientists who participated in the poll conducted for the article linked below had to say about what has happened to science to see the truth in this. It is disheartening for me especially as it only serves to remind one of the general metaphor of what is happening to life in general because of an economic operating system long past its use by date.

The 7 biggest problems facing science, according to 270 scientists

by Julia Belluz, Brad Plumer, and Brian Resnick on July 14, 2016

A Contrast of Themes from Wired and Others

In one breath we're told of such awesome power that the very way we view what is a special day or not is at the touch of one entity. And in the next we glimpse the taking away of infrastructure because communities can no longer afford to maintain it; even as another powerful entity creates infrastructure for its own purposes. What do these have in common?

It is the enshrinement of cost as the holiest of hollies; either as what the lessening of what we have to pay for baubles of whatever type, or for the provision of service infrastructure someone else pays for, and us thinking there is no social cost involved.

And in this twist of cost bait and switch we fail to see how it creates its own dynamic of wage suppression so that everything that is socially beneficial is either done away with, or given over to the interests of parties who gain in ways we simply close our eyes to. We close our eyes and fail to consider that what is at the very essence of a "cost" based form of economy is an operating model that we could do away with if we would but see not only what it is actually doing to us, but that there is an alternative made possible by the very technologies that have made that model obsolete in the first place.

Prime Day Shows Amazon Is So Powerful It Can Make Up Its Own Holiday

Cash-Strapped Towns Are Un-Paving Roads They Can’t Afford to Fix

Google’s Project Fi Is One Step Closer to Unifying the World’s Wireless Networks

Information Infrastructure and How it is Created and Maintained


See Also:

WHAT ALL THOSE STUDENT LOANS ARE FOR

Why Is College So Insanely Expensive In The US?

21 diggs Explainer

Actually, it's a pretty good deal. All things considered, the average college degree costs $500,000.

PRIME MOVER

Jeff Bezos Is Hurtling Toward World Domination

28 diggs newsweek.com Technology

Today, the question is not whether Amazon can survive but whether we can survive without Amazon.