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On February 2, 2022 a Senate Finance Subcommittee Chaired by Sen E. Warren was held to discuss the Future of Medicare. I suggest that everyone SPEND TWO HOURS AND LISTEN AND TAKE NOTES - BE INFORMED. This should be a required homework assignment. The MEDICARE PROGRAM is being looted via multiple methods of fraud, trade restraints, anti-competing strategies, and purchased politicians. Nancy Pelosi received an award from her hospital friends for her work on preventing changes to their looting. Joe Biden just gave United Health Group a $900 million boost of income by delaying implementation of ant-fraud measures from CMS.

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The greed, looting and pillaging of the American people has to stop. Thank you for continuing to highlight the dynamics here. Fundamentally, this is a problem of greed, but we can never erase greed from humanity so the only option is to remove the perverse incentives that have been built into every aspect of our economic structure for the past 40-50 years. Obviously increasing competition is one aspect of this as well but as you say, that SEC rule change on stock buybacks, the removal of any caps on consumer interest rates, tying C-suite pay to share price rather than real world performance are all part of this perverse incentive environment. When the politicians in DC gutted the Congressional Research Service and all the very effective regulatory bodies the field was left open to shysters and lobbyists to paint a portrait of reality that is utterly self-serving and delusional, and since our legislators are essentially paid by these same self-interested actors, the whole thing is as corrupt as possible. And here we are with an almost entirely monopoly economy in every important sector and our country can no longer compete. Great job America.

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US health system is a joke. It's proven

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More: Stock Buybacks Were Once Illegal. Why Are They Legal Now? The SEC changed policy during the Reagan administration in 1982. https://mavenroundtable.io/theintellectualist/news/stock-buybacks-were-once-illegal-why-are-they-legal-now

Corporate tax breaks contained in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 provided the corporate cash for the vastly increased level of buybacks in 2018. When companies do these buybacks, they deprive themselves of the liquidity that might help them cope when sales and profits decline in an economic downturn. Why Stock Buybacks Are Dangerous for the Economy https://hbr.org/2020/01/why-stock-buybacks-are-dangerous-for-the-economy

$4.2 TRILLION on Corporate Stock Buy Back that were illegal in 1982. https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-congress-quadruple-the-taxes-on-stock-buybacks/

and https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-your-senators-become-a-co-sponsor-of-the-stock-buyback-accountability-act-of-2023

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