Would you rob a bank for $2.6 trillion?

I certainly would; when can we start"

Would you rob a bank for $300?

Of course not, what kind of person do you think I am?

We have established that. We are not just haggling over the price.

We are selling our souls for the gold coins of America's health-care treasure chest. The trillions we spend annually in this country on health care blow away any mythical trove dreamed by the drunkest of rum-soaked pirates. Just writing the numbers consumes enough ink to paint the Golden Gate Bridge — $2,600,000,000,000. Even with the bailout of all of Wall Street, AIG and Detroit combined, there are zeros to spare.

In the end it is all about money. People talk about patients' rights, quality care, serving the uninsured, longer life. Don't be fooled, folks. It's the dollars. And what you see are that those who scream the most against change are the ones who have created this goose laying 2.6 trillion eggs.

The louder the protests, the more the power brokers, the privileged, the special interests and the medical rich worry they are going to have to drive Fiats, not Ferraris.

Health care is big business, I mean really BIG business. GM is a pittance. AIG is pocket change. Citibank is loose coins on the bureau.

What we spend on operations, hospitals, medicines, doctors, nursing homes, MRIs, ambulances is real money. And we are spending more and more each day with no reassurance that what we buy is worth it and no guarantee it won't kill us in the process.

Who is to blame for this sellout? We all are. When we don't pay personally for care we have no accountability for the cost. We are paying more and more of the cost via insurance payments, but it is the insurance companies who write the checks or don't write the checks, whatever the case may be.

Of course, this is only done after they remove their share off the top for administration. But fair-share means lucrative salaries for the execs; expensive retreats for the board, and swank settings at HQ.

Then the pharmaceutical industry has its needs of billions. Yes, it is very costly to mine a drug, but when more is spent on advertising and stupid trinkets for doctor offices than research and development, then priorities are confused.

For $2.6 trillion the blame is thick and deep. If we could just halt and reverse the obesity epidemic in this country we could have a huge impact on the bottom line. We are eating and sitting ourselves sick to death. We overdose on calories and underdose on activity. We attempt to buy immortality on one hand and spend ourselves to death on the other.