If you really want to know why investor money is so tight, why jobs are not becoming more available, why business is showing ever more hostility toward government, and why all of this is negatively impacting Wall Street – you remember them – they are the companies whose profitability determines how much your 401K and other investment vehicles make or lose, then watch the video below. If you are content with your preconceived notions, then don’t bother going any further.

If you think T. J. Rodgers is just a cranky, tight-fisted greedy businessman who cares more about lining his pockets than yours, consider the following:

The Foundation, For Individual Rights In Education (FIRE: A Free Speech Advocate) article on T. J. Rodgers and his influence on Dartmouth College as an alumni trustee.

Here’s a revealing article on T. J. Rodger’s view on corporate welfare, and he is far from alone as you will discover.

Here is a list of many, many philosophical articles and speechs made by Mr. Rodgers as he perceives the relationship between government and business that are available on his corporate website: Cypress Perform a leader in technology.

In support of Mr. Rodger’s comments regarding closing plants and laying off people, I can tell you that as you look around New England for medical imaging centers, you will notice that many of those that were in existence 2 years ago are now closed. The company I work for closed all of our Rhode Island centers and half of our Massachusetts facilities due to the economic hit led by the same Medicare/Medicaid reimbursement cuts that are now causing physicians to stop accepting Medicare/Medicaid insured patients. The imaging centers are taking any patient referred to them just to survive; but as you can see from my company’s record (which is not atypical), many are not surviving because the reimbursements won’t cover costs; let alone technology updates.

Physician offices, on the other hand, are dropping patients because the government won’t pass the “Doc Fix” legislation that has been promised and pending for a long time to bring Medicare/Medicaid reimbursements for physician services up. The government can’t pass “Doc Fix” without driving up the cost of Obama-care legislation to a level where an already angry populace becomes apoplectic. The CBO has already come out and stated (after the fact, as usual) that the health care legislation now referred to as Obama-care will cost much, much more than it originally estimated prior to the Congressional vote.

I’m sure you all remember the Obama Administration promising that rationing would not occur with the passage of health care reform. Well, the truth of the matter is that it is already occurring. Medical Imaging Centers have been closing at record rates over the past few years. I once prominent player in health care and source of high paying jobs, one by one, these facilities are closing their doors on an almost daily basis.

As the number or MRI, PET and CAT scan facilities close, the longer people will have to wait for an exam and the further people will have to travel to get their examination. If that is not rationing by default, then what is. On the other hand, hospitals are receiving government grants and cost sharing which helps them to minimize, or as shown, to eliminate competition and to ultimately force patients into government controlled single payer facilities.

In the same vein, President Obama has recently appointed Dr. Donald Berwick to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) who has shown no reticence to admit that he is a rationing advocate. While Dr. Berwick is definitely not a Dr. Mengele; he is not an advocate for equal opportunity to full, fair and impartial health care. I find his views on health care repugnantly un-American and dangerous, but that is only one man’s opinion; I leave you to formulate your own.

So, all in all, when you’ve finished this article, ask yourself who is the real bad guy: businessmen or government.