Originally published at http://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/12/31/drugs-dont-work-if-people-cant-afford-them-big-pharma-raise-prices-300-medications
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This is because they save lives. That’s how capitalism works.
Back in the old days you can get all drugs based on the cost of manufacturing, lots were generic drugs that worked and were cheap, because they were off patent.
that all begun its shift in 1995 with the WTO, and the subsequent end of the Reasonable Pricing Rule.
Now drug prices are based on competition. You want cheap lifesaving drugs, move to one of the poorest countries. But you’ll have trouble unless you want to make them yourself.
We’ve traded or are trading the jobs of allegedly overpaid people, to the countries that manufactured generic drugs to get them to take them off the market.
See the film Fire in the Blood, ( fireintheblood dot com ) this is its scary sequel, where the good guys DON’T win and millions more poor people die just like died in the 90s.
Because we let our attention lapse just a minute.
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Pfizer’s greed means green. But only for them.
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$1000 A PILL
pure profit
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This is not new practice. Back in the late 70’s a pharmacy employee at the hospital told me that the hospital was able to charge $3 for a pill which cost them .03 dollar or 3 cents. This even before medicare, world trade agreements and when we had drug production in this country ( we no longer make anything much of value here in the good ol’ oosa)
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Is the big farmer the cash cow’s friend? Yes and no. The cow isn’t free to leave the feedlot. The farmer takes all of the cow’s children away on a truck. Someday when the cow can’t produce milk, she’ll ride away on that same truck.
Big Pharma isn’t your friend. If you’re broke and can’t produce the money, for all they care you die. 50,000 Americans a year die because Pharma went out of its way to addict millions of Americans to their opioid pills.
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Nothing “modest” about their inhuman chutzpah, is there just?
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We killed 30 million poor people, mostly children to show how bad it was to be poor in the 1990s and 2000s, until a single man Yusef Hamied, embarrassed them into stopping it for a few years. But now we are going back to our old tricks because we’re buying India off with our jobs.
We sure are sophisticated, huh?
Financially, I mean. there is no stopping us.
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With the massive cost of living increase of 1.3% for 2021, social security recipients should have no trouble absorbing the extra cost. /s
“They’ll get it all from you, sooner or later. 'Cause they own this fucking place.” - George Carlin, “The American Dream” (2004)
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How much blood can one squeeze out of a beet?
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The country is about to be recycled.
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As practiced in the US, medicine is a big syndicate designed to wring as much money from citizens as it can. What this means is that people are in debt and are unable to buy other things. Big Medicine is a parasite on society.
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These greedy companies always have a catch to their seeming “largess”, don’t they?
Time we see this as an opportunity to explore healthy alternatives to their poisons and to double down on our efforts to protect, restore our eco-systems as our health is dependent on their health too.
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MAGA- my friend…
C’mon man…we will look at this.
And it is not just Big Pharma but so many other corporations. My phone/internet is one such. When I complained and demanded an explanation their answer was simply, “This is the cost of doing business”. I am looking for alternatives now in my state of Vermont.
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If Biden fought and changed the pharmaceutical industry’s stranglehold on extremely unwarranted excessive medication costs, something that a large majority of voters would approve, his chances of a second term would be enhanced. The problem of course, he is more indebted to the industry than to the people. He is the ultimate corporate “profits first democrat”. Biden got 5.9 million and Trump got 1.5 million in dollars from the industry in support of their campaigns.
" Every American has got to recognize, we are the only major country on Earth not to guarantee health care to all people. We pay by far the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs because the pharmacy, the pharmaceutical industry is out of control ripping us off.
John Lewis
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Yuk… who takes these pills with their unquantifiable side effects? Oh i know, people like my mom who though she can barely get out of bed, gets up to get a glass of water so she can swallow her handfull of pills on schedule…
Not me, id rather die a natural death, whatever that is. Remember, not a single life has been saved…ever. prolonged maybe but never saved.
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Add
COMCAST, Grocery stores, and any insurance company you deal with
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PURE ANGER at those Criminals posing as industrialists and medication producers … and the support system the let’s them do it!
This year we must begin … the CHANGE.
We will need to alter our #1 medication known as Media to do so !
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And what about veterinary pharma. The cost of animal medication is exorbitant.
Healthy food/exercise/fresh air is the most important to maintain a body. These meds are more often than not, worse than the disease they are meant to cure.
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