Time to call the trust busters

Remember ghostbusters?  Well, we’re gonna call the trust busters now.   We need to call back the people from the mid 20th century like trust-busting Harry Truman who broke up monopolies in this country and restored economic prosperity to the working class.  
Today, we need to call them to stop the health insurance companies from buying up hospitals, clinics, and pharmacies.  This kind of vertical integration is the kind of monopoly power that was outlawed decades ago by Congress and is costing us dearly in higher hospital and doctor bills and insurance premiums.
But this Republican Congress has failed to hold health insurance companies accountable.  We need to replace them with the political descendants of the FDR Democrats— Democrats like Peggy Flanaghan and Trina Swanson who will hold insurance companies accountable to the law. 
To ensure their ability to continue to reap massive profits from our health care system after Obama care limited their cut of our premiums to 15-percent, the insurance companies started buying up hospitals, clinics, drug manufacturers and pharmacies.  For instance, Aetna Insurance owns CVS pharmacy, which charges 1,000 percent more for specialty drugs than the pharmacies charge who are independently owned.  United Health Insurance bought Optum Health Care.  Aetna owns Oak Street Health system.  Close to home, Health Partners is now trying to buy Essentia Health. 
Health Partners is a regional health care provider owned by an insurance company.  They will have the ability to inflate costs at Essentia to take profits and then increase insurance premiums because of higher health care costs. With vertical monopoly power, insurance companies can profit on both the provider-side and the insurer-side of medical care.  This drives up your patient cost, of course.  You now are a captive patient in an insurance company monopoly.  
Fortunately,  we have DFL elected officials in Minnesota who are in charge of reviewing this merger.  Therefore, we have a chance that this won’t happen.  If Republicans were in charge, they would hand it over to Health Partners.  They always hand over tax subsidies, tax breaks and power over the worker, consumer and patient to the billionaire owners of corporations.  
Therefore, don’t look to the Republicans to do anything but genuflect to corporate power.  If you want your elected officials to protect us from excess profit-taking by insurance companies, then elect Trina Swanson for the U.S. House and Peggy Flanagan for the U.S. Senate.  They will stop monopoly power of health care.  They will make health care affordable.  
Jan Johnson
International Falls