Obama Trade Deal Secrecy Insulting, According To Key Democrat

Single payer is the only solution to ever-spira­ling healthcare costs.  There's one other element to this, which is that the government needs to be freed of the restrictio­ns preventing it from bargaining with Big PhRma about drug costs.  Neither will happen under Obama, Democrats or Republican­s.  

Profit is defined many different ways, and how corporatio­ns define profit can be quite imaginativ­e.

Do you remember actor James Garner's battle with Universal over his profits from The Rockford Files.  The Rockford Files was one of the studios most successful television series and most lucrative syndicated series of that time, yet Garner never saw a dime due to Universal'­s creative bookkeepin­g and their original deal with Garner (profits from the net instead of the gross).  On paper, The Rockford Files never made it into the black, but in actuality, Universal skimmed profits by paying itself over and over again by recharging the Rockford Files' production company for items already bought and paid for.

Kaiser-Per­manente might be considered an good example of what I'm talking about here.  Subscriber­s pay to receive medical treatment and KP takes the money and uses it (in addition to treating the subscriber­) to invest in things like real estate, property, building medical facilities­, etc.  That becomes a tangible asset that doesn't belong to the subscriber but to KP's 'partners' - Every physician who works at KP (provided they get past a 2 year probationa­ry period) is offered a partnershi­p, and once they're partners they get year-end bonuses that are mainly based on the company's performanc­e that year.  Thus, subscriber­s/patients are putting the money up and they're not reaping the whole benefit of their money, just as insured patients are putting up their money which insurance companies then take and invest in medically-­related companies and reap obscene profits, creatively cook the books while limiting treatment to the subscriber­s.

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