Bill Passes Senate

I am sure you have heard some stuff in the news lately about the bill that just passed the Senate that deals with pharmaceuticals.

The facts found in the report are almost as astonishing as the source of the report itself: USA Today, a mainstream media giant in the United States, has revealed the apparent financial conflict of interest by U.S. Senators who voted against the infamous S.1082 reimportation amendment. That amendment would have ended Big Pharma's monopoly over U.S. consumers and ultimately saved American citizens, businesses and governments tens of millions of dollars by allowing them to import medicines from other nations with approved safety records (such as Canada or Japan).

But 49 Senators voted against the amendment, defending the Big Pharma monopoly that continues to force Americans to pay the highest prices in the world, by far, for medicines. As I've documented in my book, Natural Health Solutions and the Conspiracy to Keep You From Knowing About Them, some pharmaceuticals are marked up 500,000% or more over the cost of their ingredients!

What could have prompted these 49 Senators to vote to protect the profits of drug companies? Follow the money and you'll find your answer. As it turns out, nearly every one of the 49 Senators who voted against drug reimportation has accepted money from drug companies. USA Today reported the top offenders who voted against the bill, along with the dollars they've accepted from drug companies since 2001:

U.S. Senators' Drug Money
Richard Burr, R-N.C.
$520,694

John Kerry, D-Mass.
$304,888

Joe Lieberman, I-Conn.
$281,040

Arlen Specter, R-Pa.
$259,699

Orrin Hatch, R-Utah
$241,850

Max Baucus, D-Mont.
$199,000

Tom Carper, D-Del.
$183,794

Mike Enzi, R-Wyo.
$174,338

Notice that these Senators represent both major political parties, and there's even one independent in the mix. Consumers should remember that no political party will defend the people against powerful corporations. Ultimately, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle will sell out in order to protect their own power and reelection funds.

As Rima Laibow (www.HealthFreedomUSA.org) observed in a recent e-mail update to her readers, it's amazing just how cheaply the U.S. Senators have been bought off! For a few hundred thousand dollars -- the profits from only a couple hundred prescription drug users -- these Senators appear to have been either strongly influenced or outright bribed to kill a measure that would have saved Americans tens of billions of dollars and finally freed the American people from the financial stranglehold of Big Pharma.

These Senators, of course, all insist they were voting to protect the "safety" of Americans, claiming that medicines imported from other countries are dangerous. But medicines bought right here in the United States are killing 100,000+ Americans each year! Do these Senators somehow imagine drugs bought in the U.S. are safer than the same medicines purchased somewhere else? Do they suffer under the illusion that paying more for prescription drugs somehow makes them safer?

When it comes down to it, none of the arguments against drug reimportation hold water. The killing of the amendment was done for one simple, uncomplicated reason: to protect the safety of Big Pharma profits by forcing Americans to pay monopoly prices for their medicines.

Modern-day Indentured Servants
The whole price fixing scam brings to mind a relevant term from American history: Indentured servants. These indentured servants were people who agreed to work a farm or plantation for a period of 4-7 years in exchange for passage to America. But dishonest plantation owners played a cruel trick on the indentured servants: They had to buy their farm tools and supplies from the plantation owner. But they couldn't pay cash since they didn't have any money, so they were forced to extend their work commitment in exchange for tools and supplies.

A shovel, for example, might cost you another month on the farm. A set of work clothes might cost you two months more. Little by little, the plantation owner enslaved the indentured servants in a never-ending cycle of debt that could only be repaid by a lifetime of work ending in death and bankruptcy.

Sound familiar? Americans are trapped in a lifetime of medical debt being paid to wealthy drug corporations. If you live in America and need medicine, the FDA and Big Pharma are doing everything in their power to make sure you have no choice but to buy it from "the company store" -- the monopoly-controlled U.S. pharmaceutical market that's basically in the business of ripping people off by selling them dangerous synthetic chemicals.

Need to control your blood sugar? That's a few thousand dollars a year. Have high cholesterol? Another few thousand. Got cancer? Fork over several thousand dollars each month for yet more chemicals sold at monopoly prices to a nation of health consumers who have been financially enslaved as Indentured Servants. I once talked to a cancer patient who was about to fork over $14,000 per injection for an experimental cancer drug! That person's life savings would have been wiped out in just one month while enriching the richest corporations in the world: drug companies.

Modern medicine is the new indentured servant plantation. Same scam, different crop. The American people are once again being worked to death by greedy businessmen who only wish to increase the size of their own profits, regardless of how many people have to be exploited or destroyed along the way. And 49 U.S. Senators seem to whole-heartedly approve of this financial enslavement of the American people. They voted, on the record, to propel a profiteering price scheme operated by a criminal conspiracy masterminded by the FDA and Big Pharma.

Republican Senators who voted for the financial enslavement of the American people
Lamar Alexander
Robert Bennett
Kit Bond
Jim Bunning
Richard Burr
Saxby Chambliss
Tom Coburn
Thad Cochran
Norm Coleman
Bob Corker
John Cornyn
Michael Crapo
Elizabeth Dole
Pete Domenici
Michael Enzi
Lindsey Graham
Judd Gregg
Chuck Hagel
Orrin Hatch
Kay Bailey Hutchison
Johnny Isakson
Jon Kyl
Richard Lugar
Mel Martinez
Mitch McConnell
Lisa Murkowski
Pat Roberts
Arlen Specter
Ted Stevens
John Sununu
Craig Thomas
George Voinovich
John Warner

Democratic Senators who voted for the financial enslavement of the American people
Max Baucus
Evan Bayh
Maria Cantwell
Thomas Carper
Edward Kennedy
John Kerry
Mary Landrieu
Frank Lautenberg
Blanche Lincoln
Robert Menéndez
Barbara Mikulski
Patty Murray
Ben Nelson
Jay Rockefeller
Kenneth Salazar

Corporate imperialism at work
One thing that these Senators have demonstrated quite convincingly is that the rich get richer in America, especially when rich Senators protect the rich drug companies at the expense of the increasingly impoverished American people.

In my opinion every one of the Senators listed here should be voted out of power at the next available opportunity. But of course, Big Pharma can buy off the replacements just as easily. There's no end to the cash being generated by this illegal price fixing scheme that, by any sane standard, would have long ago been classified as an organized crime racket and prosecuted under the RICO Act.

The real problem, then, is not necessarily dishonest Senators who would sell out their countrymen (and women) for a few dollars from Big Pharma. The real problem is that corporations are allowed to financially influence lawmakers in the first place! The problem is the lobbying and campaign finance structure that allows virtually all lawmakers from both sides of the aisle to be so easily and cheaply bought off (or at least strongly influenced) by corporate interests. Lobbyists are far too influential in Washington, and in fact, the Corporation itself has become dangerous to the health, safety and future of the American people. (View the documentary: The Corporation at http://www.TheCorporation.com )

Even if these 49 Senators actually sold out the American people, and even if they resigned tomorrow (which they would never think of doing, of course), their replacements would be just as easily corrupted by a system of corporate control over U.S. lawmakers that has turned the United States into a Plutocracy -- government by the wealthy elite, where the corporations and the government become one entity that exploits the productivity of the population to enrich the few.

As I pointed out in a previous article about this betrayal by U.S. Senators, many of our lawmakers have become adversaries of the people and are now openly fighting for the expansion of profits and power for mega-corporations while steamrolling the interests and freedoms of the American people. In a very real sense, they have openly betrayed the American people they claim to represent. They have devolved into corporate imperialists who aim to shore up their own power by sacrificing the interests of those they have sworn to protect -- the voters who gullibly put them into power in the first place.