“Corruption robs citizens of equal access to vital services, denying the right to quality health care, public safety, and education,” the Biden administration wrote Monday, adding that corruption “has been shown to significantly curtail the ability of states to respond effectively to public health crises.”

These were the key findings of the first-ever “United States Strategy on Countering Corruption,” coordinated by President Joe Biden’s National Security Council. But the strategy paper noticeably avoided mention of a particular form of corruption: corporate capture, where companies and their financial interests completely dominate the policymaking process.

The Biden administration, as it turns out, is a perfect example of this: every policy solution they propose involves some sort of corporate giveaway. This is the kind of institutionalized and legalized bribery that’s almost never discussed — the corruption that’s responsible for high health care costs and poor health care outcomes in the United States, and that has made it effectively impossible for lawmakers to rationally respond to the COVID-19 pandemic here and around the globe.