Today, corruption in these markets is so extreme that hospital executives themselves are often offered a cut of the fees from GPOs. In 2013, one analyst said that “many hospital executives who are part of the Premier alliance have learned to rely on that share back as an integral part of their annual compensation.” In other words, hospitals are buying supplies at inflated prices, and those suppliers use some of that extra money in direct bribes to hospital executives.
The legalization of kickbacks happened as a series of mergers in the 1990s consolidated power within the industry. In 1995, Premier Health Alliance, American Healthcare Systems, and SunHealth Alliance merged into the nation’s largest GPO, Premier. By 2017, the giants in the industry - Vizient, Premier, HealthTrust, and Intaler - came to manage $300 billion of hospital purchasing for 5000 health systems, or 90% of total medical supplies in the United States. These GPOs have deals with the three major distributors - McKesson, AmerisourceBergen and Cardinal Health - which precludes any smaller distributors from getting into the business. At this point, 90% of generic medicines are bought by just four firms.
And this consolidation and restructuring of hospital buying has ruined the American supply chain, and prevented the ability to rebuild it.
Now that the presidential election is over, Politico's reporter has admitted that many documents found on Hunter Biden's laptop were authentic. This finding reverses the pre-election position of Politico, and is not a mere factoid. Rather, this admission corroborates Glenn Greenwald's analysis and evidence that left-leaning media was corrupt and complicit with the deep state leading up to the election. In sum, reporters refused to do their jobs as reporters and it led to fake news. I used to hate that term, but I can no longer deny that large swathes of our "news" is concocted . . . fake (e.g., several years of hysterical fact-free reporting on alleged Trump-Russia connection). The motivation was always clear - - left-leaning legacy news outlets hated Trump and made it their mission to avoid four more years of Trump.
Do I need to repeatedly write that I voted for Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden and that I find Trump deranged, incompetent and dangerous? My concern in this post is not about who would make the better president. My concern is that the news media should always do its job, publishing important facts regardless of who the evidence helps or hurts, allowing the voters to decide what is important. The opposite of that happened regarding Hunter Biden's laptop, part of a growing trend. In the new way of discussing important national issues, one denies or hides evidence that conflicts with one's preferences. Proud and arrogant confirmation bias is the way many of us make decisions now, instead of relying on Enlightenment values. These are sad days, indeed. It reminds me of how we formerly ridiculed Pravda, the official newspaper of the communist party of the USSR.
Do I need to start this post with a reminder that I voted for Hilary Clinton and that I consider Donald Trump a generally dispicable person with whom I rarely agree on an issue?
Michael Sussmann has been indicted. The New York Times reputed this true fact but merely indicated that it's significance was limited, explaining that Sussman falsely told the FBI that he was not representing any client when he reported that there was a covert communications channel between Donald Time and Alfa Bank, a Kremlin-linked financial institution.
Compare the above NYT version of Sussmann's indictment to Glenn Greenwald's detailed analysis of the meaning and ramifications of Sussmann's indictment. These two accounts are night and day. Greenwald connected the dots to demonstrate the long-term mendacity and complicity of the left-leaning legacy news media regarding the supposed Trump-Russia connection, as well as the inescapable conclusion that Hillary Clinton delivered four key lies only eight days before the election.
Greenwald's story is one that he has told repeatedly, but this is yet more evidence showing how our news media is organized into two teams tethered to our two main political parties. Here is the link to following Greenwald's tweets on Twitter:
Greenwald has often lamented that reporters who make shit up are rarely punished. Much more often, they are promoted.
A small bit of my faith in the American political system would be restored if politicians would step up to condemn the atrocious behavior of members of their own political party. A small bit of my faith in the American media would be restored if party-affiliated news media (which is most of legacy media) would start stepping up to condemn politicians of their favorite political party. Ryan Grimm of The Intercept recently shined a laser beam on the disgusting behavior of the family of Democratic Senator Joe Manchin and his family with regard to EpiPen corruption. On Breaking Points, Krystal Ball followed suit.
Meanwhile, Democrats and Democrat-affiliated-news-media are otherwise maintaining radio silence. This is merely a recent example of the kind of thing that infests both parties of our political system. Here is Krystal Ball's summary of the problem:
Under Joe Manchin's daughter [Heather Bresch], [Pharmaceutical company] Mylan jacked up the price [of Epipens], locked in a product monopoly jacked up the price of war, and then work to eliminate single pack sales with zero medical justification, simply so they could double their revenue, all with the explicit understanding that for their customers, their lives depend on the product, so they have no choice but to suck it up and pay whatever Milan decided to charge. There are no words to describe this type of exploitative, morally bankrupt and sociopathic behavior. It fills me with pure disgust that is only amplified by the knowledge that this type of criminality underpins our entire healthcare system: Bought politicians, price fixing, price gouging monopolies, every single person involved on the take with the cost in dollars, sickness and death passed on to the most vulnerable among us. It's disgusting. So next time the media tries to tell you "Joe Manchin opposes the reconciliation package because he's just trying to represent his conservative state," do not fall for their nonsense. His motives are just the same as his daughter's: to protect corporate profits and his own personal interests above everything else. And it's so disgusting here, Sagar, because you see it all. You see the way that the politician gets his daughter the job. You see the way that he uses his position to ignore when they ship jobs overseas. You see that once she's in that place, the way that she just exploits people knowing knowing that they have no other choice and explicitly making sure that these customers have no other product that they go to. It is some of the most despicable behavior that you can imagine.
I repeatedly encounter people who identify on the political left who insist that the Laptop found at a computer shop in October, 2020 was not Hunter Biden's laptop and that it was a Russian ploy to interfere with the U.S. Presidential election. The fact that these beliefs persist tells a sad story about the power the news media has to defraud its trusting audience.
This CBS Report from April 3, 2021 is recent confirmation of my belief that the laptop really was Hunter Biden's laptop. April 2021, long after the election was decided, was a politically convenient time and place for Hunter to deny that the laptop was his, but he didn't deny it. October, 2020, when the NY Post initially reported on the laptop, prior to the election, was also the perfect time for Hunter Biden to deny that it was his laptop, but he didn't deny it then either. He has never denied that it was his laptop. In fact, in the above CBS interview Hunter Biden stated that it is possible that it might have been his laptop. Watch the CBS video excerpt and observe Hunter Biden's demeanor. Is this the sort of person who would use his father's name to cut lucrative self-serving deals with foreign powers? Is that the sort of person who would write the emails found on the laptop. Seems apparent to me.
If this laptop and payoff had been about any of Trump's degenerate children, the media would have been all over it. The failure to cover this story is stunning jour - - - I almost wrote "journalistic malpractice," but it was far worse. It was an intentional and deliberate ongoing muti--news-outlet conspiracy to keep citizens from knowing something important that might affect their views on an upcoming election. Full disclosure: I voted for Biden and I was horrified by the thought that Trump might win a second term. There are more important principles at play, however, than the result of any one election. See Russell Brand's interview with Glenn Greenwald on this topic:
In the final months of the heated 2020 presidential race, The Post revealed a trove of emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop that raised questions about his then-candidate father’s ties to his son’s foreign business ventures, including Burisma, a Ukrainian natural gas company linked to corruption.
The emails revealed that the younger Biden introduced a top Burisma executive to his father, then vice president, less than a year before the elder Biden admittedly pressured Ukrainian officials into firing a prosecutor who was investigating the company.
The never-before-revealed meeting is mentioned in a message of appreciation that Vadym Pozharskyi, a Burisma board adviser, sent Hunter on April 17, 2015.
An image of Hunter Biden found on the laptop at the center of The Post exposé
The water-damaged MacBook Pro — which bore a sticker from the Beau Biden Foundation — was dropped off for repair at a Delaware computer shop in April 2019, but the individual who dropped it off never returned to pick it up.
. . .
In addition to his Ukrainian connections, other emails on the computer showed Hunter discussing potential business deals with China’s largest private energy company. One deal seemed to spark considerable interest with the younger Biden, who called it “interesting for me and my family.”
. ..
Hunter Biden’s position with the reportedly corrupt energy company — which paid him “as much as $50,000 per month” — “created an immediate potential conflict of interest” because his father was involved in US policy toward Ukraine, the report stated.
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