Yes, We Can Stop Drug Price Gouging! Here’s How!
Yes, We Can Stop Drug Price Gouging! Here’s How!
We human beings sometimes do some terrible things in pursuit of the almighty dollar. But to our credit, one moral line we humans don’t cross is to profiteer by gouging sick people on the price of medicines their lives depend on.
Unless, of course, you count executives of giant pharmaceutical corporations as human beings. Gouging patients is their preferred business model.
It’s a scream then to watch Big Pharma fall into a sky-is-falling fit over our government’s long-overdue move to give us patients some bargaining power over this monopolistic industry. Under President Joe Biden’s anti-inflation policy passed early this year, our Medicare program can now negotiate drug prices on our behalf.
This will drastically lower what you and I are now forced to pay to the profiteers. For decades, Congress has coddled the corporate gougers (who maintain by far the biggest lobbying army in Washington), allowing them to manipulate the patent laws and rig the system. Thus, we Americans pay two-to-three times more than people in other countries for the exact same medicines.
Oh, wail drug executives, bloated profits give us the incentive to keep developing innovative new cures. Hold it right there, Slick – most basic drug development is done by tax-funded medical researchers, not brand-name market hucksters. Mega-drug outfits like Johnson & Johnson, Merck, and Bristol Myers spend more on advertising, exorbitant executive salaries, lobbying, and big stockholder payouts than on research. Still, these same greedhounds are suing Biden, howling that making them negotiate is an unconstitutional “taking” of their income. But, hello, these scoundrels have been taking our income, health, and lives for years.
I’m with Biden on this – as is 80 percent of the public (including 77 percent of Republicans) who favor making the gougers negotiate. You go, Joe! To stay informed and involved, connect with Public Citizen at citzen.org.
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Yes, We Can Stop Drug Price Gouging! Here’s How!
Patricia, James, Jim - we're with you. Not that Big Pharma is the only exploiter of the public's basic needs, but it is by far the most egregious. This just has to stop!!!
This fight with the drug oligarchs is important. It's success can be a life-changer for millions of people. Made me think about the 2016 Presidential election. Enough voters passed on Hillary in November because they 'didn't like her'. Well, how's that working for ya? Pissed about all sorts of stuff (most personal) and willing to forget about Michael Cohen, Trump's partner in crime, who taught The Donald to attack attackers (never mind their truth, his bogus claims), deny, deny, deny; no finger-prints. Back to Hillary. Angry about Bill's filandering. Didn't like her pant-suits. Well, we had a full-fledged national disaster and very nearly a constitutional breakdown on January 6 (a day that shall live in Infamy). Why? Because a growing number of our countrypeople have become lazy, self-absorbed, uneducated, blah blah blah, etc. Think politics and voting is for other people....
[I know a woman who bought a glass-front armoire to display every knick-knack available in honor of Princess Diana, and who's children were heathens. Of course she doesn't have time to vote!].
In high school, my civics teacher talked about the holocaust; he passed out magazines and photographs of Auschwitz. I never got those photos out of my mind. Schools slowing lost any mojo they may have had and are increasingly in the hands of right-wing nincompoops and kids are getting dummer than ever. (Generation upon generation.)
So, back to Biden and Big Pharma. Let's say the 2024 Presidental choice is Biden or Trump; Biden or Nicki; Biden vs. Sir Woke; Biden vs. Rumplestiltzkin. I don't care if Biden forgets what he's saying, falls down the stairs of Airforce #1. I'm. voting for him because BIDEN is our ONLY CHANGE TO STOP THE CRAZIES. And he is the only chance we have to pursue our goals. BUT, if for any reason Biden is not on the ballot, I will vote for the Democratic nominee, whoeveritmaybe. And so should you! Everybody! VOTE! Otherwise the White House will look like the Chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives, as Marjory and Company stripped everything, including McCarthy's facade of character, and took over! Do you think ANY Republican elected to the White House can withstand that violent, vicious, vacuous mob? And should Biden achieve success or progress with drug pricing, with public lands management, with women's rights, (forget NATO, et al) -- if it can be undone, destroyed, a Republican administration WILL DO IT!
Damnit, everybody! Stop agreeing that Biden is TOO OLD. Stop kicking Harris around. You are abetting people who, IF THAT IS THE TICKET, will stay away from the polls! (We also need the House of Representatives back! More Dems in the Senate! We need people to go to the polls, not stay home watching "Survivor" while the country goes straight to hell!)
Be positive! There are horrendous consequences of a Republican victory in 2024.
I know this is a tad off Jim's subject, but not really.