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An awful lot of the concern seems to be along the lines of "but what if" rather than "they are doing this".
Yes, the basic backbone of the internet is controlled by a few companies, but those companies are not the ISP's, nor are they the companies that everyone seems to be worried about.
IMPO, any concern that a cable company is going to block or degenerate a specific destination, such as Netflix, iTunes, Amazon or any other large scale service is at best a short term worry. Cable TV companies are much like landline companies. They are still a cash cow and like landlines will be around for a while, but I don't think it will be that much longer before cable tv follows long distance service. (note, it really wasn't that long ago that Telephone companies considered Long Distance to be the new huge money maker for them. It didn't quite work out that way.)
On the flip side, government creating ISP monopolies and regulating how much people have to pay is the antithesis of the internet. I've got 100 MB to my house for less than I paid for sub 1 MB five years ago because I have five different providers who want my money - hardwired (u-verse and x-finity), wireless (AT&T, Verizon Wireless and a couple more) and Satellite.
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