Forum Post: Drug/Insurance/Prison/Media Alliance

While focusing in the military industrial complex and the unholy alliance between wealth and government, we shouldn’t forget the drug/insurance/prison/media companies’ alliance. Thousand or people in insurance, clinic, hospital, doctors’ offices devote their days to negotiating who will pay for what. Drug companies spend more on advertising their products than on research (we’re the only country, except maybe New Zealand, that allow that). We do it because media needs the profits. John Kennedy closed the horrible insane asylums in exchange for opening community mental health centers. But the centers didn’t materialize and the addicted and mentally ill are now housed to a large extent in prisons – largest mental hospitals in the country are in prison. We could treat mental illness and addiction more cheaply and more effectively in the community, but then the prisons (many private) would loose money. Politicians are quite willing to trade on fear of being ‘soft on crime’ to the elected, the mentally ill be damned. I thought this country was founded on the idea of democracy, equal opportunity – which would mean a ‘level playing field’ for the children of the rich and the children of the poor. Since when did capitalism become our national ideal? It seems we should be a bit more pragmatic about how our community organizes itself.