"The courtroom was adjourned; No verdict was returned."
American Pie (The day the Music Died), Don McLean United Artists Records 1971.
I was born in 1959. Long, long ago, I did most of my growing up in the heart of the Democratic Party- Independence, Missouri. I was too young to have known the Camelot of Jack Kennedy and Queen Jackie. To the good old boys of my town, Harry S Truman had "the voice that came from you and me." But as a youngster in church I was sometimes bounced on Clarence M. Kelley's knee. I was even a football player on a rural high school team, famed for avoiding a seasonal shutout of "Iron Man" football.
As a U.S. Senator, Truman spoke out bluntly against corporate greed, and warned about the dangers of Wall Street speculators and other moneyed special interests attaining too much influence in national affairs. Later during his chairmanship of what become known as the "Truman Committee", Harry Truman investigated the scandal of military wastefulness by exposing fraud and mismanagement, saving over $15 billion dollars and thousands of lives during WWII. As President, Truman and his Midwestern base of progressives advocated for national health insurance, backed civil rights improvements and saved a disintegrating Democratic Party after the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Independence, Missouri is often the headquarters for regional Democratic candidates ' campaign offices and still has banners on light poles with Harry S Truman's silhouette. Across from the Jackson County Annex Courthouse, a large mural retells the accomplishments of the town's most famous resident.
I however, had drifted away from my Democratic Party family roots, moving to the affluent Republican leaning suburb Lee's Summit, South of Independence. I even became a Republican myself and award winning supporter of the GOP Congressional PAC in 2002. But, in 2006, I heard a commercial from a presidential candidate asking if I believed in change, an end to Bush Era politics of fear and cynicism.
I heard the "music" again and voted for a Democratic presidential candidate embodying Hope and Change, stating: "We believe" everybody should have the opportunity to get a job that pays a living wage"we believe nobody should get bankrupt when they get sick, and everybody should have access to decent healthcare, that's something we believe-- in the Draft Obama movement's first presidential TV ad Believe Again. When I today hear the commercial from years before, tears come to my eyes.
In 2006 I knew the "everybody have(ing) access to decent healthcare" part was easy!
In 2000, I had brought a lifetime of work to the market in MedicalSupplyChain.com using the best Web based technology with online software using artificial intelligence to drastically reduce healthcare costs by incorporating common sense supplier bidding and supply chain management practices developed in the automotive and mass merchandising industries I had grown up working in.
Unknown to me, even my bank at the time US Bancorp Piper Jaffray, had done a study showing an electronic marketplace like mine would save over $20 Billion annually in hospital costs by 1998. But US Bank and the hospitals themselves were refusing to deal with me. They even used the newly created USA PATRIOT Act to stop me from breaking a nationwide hospital supply monopoly had been established through the Group Purchasing Organization Novation LLC that Jack Welch's General Electric, Johnson & Johnson and the pharmaceuticals distributed everything from band-aids to imaging equipment through.
Since monopolization is a series felony under federal and prohibited under Missouri state law I went to court starting in 2002. All I had to prove was that the Novation LLC cartel through its members including US Bancorp and General Electric had a significant share of the hospital supply market and were using unreasonable restraints on trade to exclude competitors and inflate costs.
After I filed my lawsuits, a series of NY Times articles by Mary Williams Walsh and other exposed Novation LLC Cartel's ability to exclude hospital supply competitors from health systems across the nation through long term contracts extorting kickbacks from suppliers allowed into the system. But, Judge Carlos Murguia appointed by President Bill Clinton repeatedly through out all my claims, mocking my affidavit that the USA PATRIOT Act was used to make warrantless wiretaps of my associates for the purpose of obstructing justice and excluding me from the market Jeffrey Immelt intended to preserve for the GHX electronic marketplace controlled by General Electric and Novation LLC.
By 2005 I had calculated that the more than 30 million people without health insurance, because employers and states could not keep up with Novation LLC cartel's artificial inflation of hospital supply costs, contributed to over 40,000 unnecessary deaths a year. General Electric itself stated that over 50,000 deaths were resulting from technology improvements being excluded from the management of hospital enterprises.
My litigation identified over 14 auto plants that would be closed in North America and millions of living wage jobs would be lost because the employee healthcare cost in the price of each American automobile had made them uncompetitive with Japanese brands.
The Antitrust Complaint showed how states themselves would be bankrupted by the monopoly's artificial inflation of hospital supplies. Yet the case was moved from Missouri to Kansas District Court where Judge Carlos Murguia again threw it out and threatened my attorneys.
I had gone to the Missouri Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill who had narrowly won her reace against the Social Conservative Republican Senator Jim Talent on healthcare, but now was just mouthing the Blue Dog fiscal conservative politics. It was as if she just smiled and turned away.
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