Trust Busting

IN THE UNITED STATES, there are, what, five corporations comprising the pharmaceutical cartel? Let's see...Merck, Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson, and, um.....let's see here....Target and Wal Mart! Or something like that. Whatever, there are not enough companies in the drug industry to have any real competition, and there is just the right number of companies in the business to have a nice, conspiratorial cartel. How convenient, capitalistically. How corrupt, for those of us saddled with the most expensive health care and pharmaceuticals in the world. Johnson & Johnson the other day was convicted of drug fraud and sentenced to the biggest fine in pharmaceutical history, two point billion, for selling their drugs, mainly Risperdal, for unauthorized use, and paying kickbaks to doctors for prescribing it. What an excellent money making scheme, if you don't get caught. Some people might see the U.S. Justice Department is the bad guy here, picking on free enterprise. Well, whatever. When free enterprise has nothing to stop it from doing so, it will do anything to profit, including selling bad products at ridiculous prices to uneducated consumers. With so many drugs available for so many health problems, hell, why not just market all drugs to all doctors and all consumers, and be done with it, regardless of who really need what? Brilliant plan! The big five pharmaceutical companies are enormously wealthy, their high ranking executives and lawyers all have parsonal jets, and the are ready to market new products, and litigate to defend them, well into the future. If we really want to scrap Obamacare and have real free market health care in the United States, we'll need to find a way to create more pharmaceutical companies, more health insurance corporations, and more doctors and hospitals, to provide real choice for the consumers. Monopolies can be very useful, but only if you happen to be part of one.