The July 31 column, " There will be few mourners for Obamacare ," published as part of a "Pro/Con" package, was an attack on the Affordable Care Act - which seemed typical since the writer was the founder of an organization that operates as a nonprofit but works ceaselessly to increase the profits of corporations.
The Galen Institute was identified as a nonprofit, but that term is suspect given how the group and others it works with ceaselessly write bills favoring corporations, saving legislators the trouble of letting the free market operate.
Concentrating on cranking out bills politicians can pass in exchange for campaign donations, "bill mills" may say they're nonprofit, but they certainly push for profits at the public expense, benefiting politicians and the corporations that buy them. Corporate funding enables their nonprofit status.
Such think-tank operations have poisoned government just as GOP-controlled states have poisoned Obamacare to the point of collapse. The guilty are those right-wingers who also would like to eliminate Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the entire social safety net - in the name of freedom. They don't want to fix these programs; they want to eliminate or privatize them. The freedom they seek seals the transfer of wealth from the middle class to the 1 percent who have government in their pockets, lock, stock, and barrel.
Through the State Policy Network, they have stated they want to be the IKEA of government, shipping legislators raw materials for bills favoring corporate interests. They seem happy to do the construction, too - or should I say deconstruction.
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Al Kammerer
Duluth
