…sees the mess that big money (or big potential money) has made out of health care, news, and other essential services, and declares that “Not Everything in America Has to Make a Profit.”

Maher cites a past time when the network news was a loss-leader division, medicine was small and personal, and “war profiteer” was an insult.

Of course, those were also the days before any TV channels charged subscription fees, but that’s beside the point.

The point being: Wall Street’s been vampirizing the nation’s lifeblood. And not just during the dot-com bubble and the housing bubble.

Earlier this year, I met an IT consultant whose clients have included a huge HMO provider. She insisted the health insurance companies aren’t to blame for America’s health-care cost crisis; it’s just the system that’s gone haywire.

I think it’s a little more personal than that. I believe the insurance companies (some avidly, some more reluctantly) sold out to the profiteers over the past three decades, as the ultimate American financial icon ceased to be the Almighty Dollar and instead became the Almighty Stock Price. Whole industries that weren’t intrinsically set up to reap windfall profits were retooled for just that purpose, just so they’d be considered great investments.

This year’s financial meltdown is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to realign not just health care but the whole unstable superstructure of the economy.