>>>We have a for-profit healthcare system operated by large corporations combined with a trickle-down economic policy. Toss in a few lobbyist and some corruption and there you have it.
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>Just compare Medicaid to Medicare: they're both taxpayer funded but Medicaid has strict rules to ensure it gets the best prices while Medicare recently introduced a Schedule D that provided a bonanza for big pharma that the lobbyists you describe are trying to perpetuate.
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>The issue is that brave politicians are few and far between, and the vested interests to prevent the Medicaid principles being applied in other funding schemes, are too powerful.
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>Time to start throwing tea in the harbor? ;-)

In 1974, just 3% of retiring members of Congress became lobbyists. Today, 50% of retiring Senators and 42% of retiring House members stay in DC and become lobbyists. The more than 1,500% increase goes a long way towards explaining how an entrenched, permanent political class has risen in DC. Like I said, these guys get elected to office, do a few things for special interests - then leave office and go work for the special interest they just made/passed a bunch of laws for and get paid a HUGE amount of money. This is not going to stop as long as the lobbyist are allowed to exist. This seems to be one of the attractions for Trump because since he's an 'outsider', his followers seem to think he can fix this issue of the corruption. Problem with that thinking of course is that he's one of folks doing the corrupting. Meanwhile, Bernie and his wife made just over $200,000 last year (giving $8,000 of it to charity) has taken nothing from special interest groups and has fought against money in politics, and his campaign has taken no money from corporations or Wall Street. Like the title of this thread says... "why we need Bernie".
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