By 1970, mobsters had infiltrated labor unions and they were using bribes and beat-downs to get their own way (e.g., to obtain absurd and unrealistic labor contracts). Because of the crime and the effect on businesses which got locked into absurd labor contracts, Congress passed the RICO Act (Racketeer-Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act).
It allowed for law enforcement to pull people out of positions of power — even if no direct and substantial crime had been proven in a court of law — whenever there was a pattern of indirect, circumstantial evidence indicating racketeering.
But labor unions aren’t the only place where corrupt individuals go in order to exercise unearned power over others and take their money. More recently, the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) qualifies as being a corrupt organization engaged in racketeering.
Exhibit A — Mandate Insurance for Individuals
Back in 2010, Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law, but it would not fully kick in until approximately 1 Jan 2014. Initial attempts were made to force individuals to buy health insurance from existing firms, and a penalty was put in place for a failure to give your money over to health insurance firms.
The Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of revenue for health insurance began to take off — once the federal government made it “illegal” to not do business with them and give them your money:
The blue bars show the 5-year growth rate of revenue for an industry group called Healthcare Support Services, which includes health insurance and some other service providers.
The red bars show the 5-year growth rate of revenue for the median of all US industries — in order to standardize the health insurance growth rates to the overall economic growth rate.
The revenue growth is phenomenal, and is likely not possible in a free market. Only in a corrupted market — where there are “shake-downs” which make people buy the product — would an already-established (non-infant) industry make 20% revenue gains, year, after year, after year.
Exhibit B — Recent Pfizer Revenue Gains
Another outcome which would be considered impossible in a free market is the phenomenal revenue gains that Pfizer got from a product that is at least 13 times more hazardous to your health than typical jabs (15 death reports per million doses vs. 1.1 per million).
Like health insurance firms, Pfizer business was boosted by “mandates” to use their product. But for the period from 2020-2022, Pfizer averaged over 50% revenue growth per year.
Profits over those years rose by an average of 85% per year.
The evidence suggests that health officials and drug firms and health insurance firms are engaged in widespread corruption and racketeering — making up new laws and regulations that force civilians into doing business with certain companies.
One remedy might be to use the RICO Act to use law enforcement to remove the corrupt individuals from positions of power, but caution is warranted, because no actual proof is required by the RICO Act that you directly violated a law that is substantial enough to get you removed (on its own).
A pattern of collusion and corruption is all that is required.
Reference
[1970 RICO Act lets law enforcement officials pull people out of positions of power, even when the evidence of corruption is only circumstantial] — Office of Justice Programs. https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/rico-racketeer-influenced-and-corrupt-organizations-act-statute
[HHS gets credit for the Affordable Care Act which provided a boon to health insurance firms] — US HHS. https://www.hhs.gov/about/historical-highlights/index.html
[Biden’s 2021 American Rescue Plan Act subsidized health insurance up to 400% of the poverty level] — Affordable Care Act History. https://www.wnchealthinsurance.com/affordable-care-act-history/
[Pfizer financials] — Pfizer. https://www.pfizer.com/sites/default/files/investors/financial_reports/annual_reports/2022/performance/
[industry data, analyzed and reported by Aswath Damodaran of New York University] — Aswath Damodaran. https://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/New_Home_Page/data.html
[4,496 death reports and 298.79 million doses (15 death reports per million doses)] — Rosenblum HG, Gee J, Liu R, Marquez PL, Zhang B, Strid P, Abara WE, McNeil MM, Myers TR, Hause AM, Su JR, Markowitz LE, Shimabukuro TT, Shay DK. Safety of mRNA vaccines administered during the initial 6 months of the US COVID-19 vaccination programme: an observational study of reports to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System and v-safe. Lancet Infect Dis. 2022 Jun;22(6):802-812. doi: 10.1016/S1473-3099(22)00054-8. Epub 2022 Mar 7. PMID: 35271805; PMCID: PMC8901181. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35271805/