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Is Health Care More Important Than Health Care Profits?

Is Health Care More Important Than Health Care Profits?

Last year, Donald Trump said something stupid.

OK, nothing astonishing about that — just another day (or hour) in DonaldWorld. But this stupid thing he said did astonish an entire nation, specifically Britain. Apparently, Trump had seen a televised report by his most trusted foreign policy adviser — Fox News — showing people over there protesting about their government-supported National Health Service. See, tweeted our presidential son of privilege, even the Brits are fed up with the idea of health care for all, rejecting a socialized system that, according to Trump, “is going broke and not working.”

But — oops — the protestors were actually demonstrating in favor of their health service, demanding that the Tory government put “more staff, more beds, more funds” into the public program. Contrary to Trump’s ignorance and class bias against social programs, the British people love their tax-paid health care system, specifically because it does work. Everyone there is covered, getting quality care regardless of income levels. And they don’t have to fear that they’ll be denied service or bankrupted by a rip-off medical system run by and for private insurance giants, hospital monopolies, Big Pharma and other profiteers.

To see clear evidence of a system that’s really “going broke and not working,” the president could look at the 44 million Americans (including 4 million children) who have no health coverage, plus millions of others who’re being gouged by ruthless drugmakers, denied treatment by insurance bureaucrats, and drowned in debt by surprise medical bills.

The problem with America’s health care system is — hello! — the system! During the past 30-40 years, its structure has been wholly corporatized, perverting health care from a human right to just another commodity for sale. If it’s care you want from a system, a corporation is the worst way to go, for the corporate mandate is not to maximize the health of the many, but to maximize profits for its few investor elites.

For $3.5 trillion a year, shouldn’t we Americans get a world-class health care system? Yet, while we spend the most on health care of any advanced nation in the world (more than $10,000 a year per person), we get the worst results.

No surprise then that a majority of Americans want a major overhaul of our corporate system. Indeed, the boldest proposal for structural change — the “Medicare for All” idea put forth by Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Pramila Jayapal — is now backed by 82 percent of Democrats, 66 percent of independents, and (get this) 52 percent of Republicans! So… why isn’t Congress responding to this overwhelming public demand for universal coverage?

Of course, corporate lobbyists and corrupting campaign cash are one reason. But also, our lawmakers do not personally feel the financial pain and emotional distress inflicted by a system built on private greed. Instead, the health needs of our governing elites are being generously provided by a double layer of the socialized care that they are refusing to provide for everyone else.

First, they and their loved ones get taxpayer-subsidized insurance coverage, with you and me paying about 72 percent of the price of their health plans. But —- shhh! — through a secretive office in the U.S. Capitol building, members of Congress also have privileged access to a full-blown system of — shhh! — health care socialism!

Called the Office of the Attending Physician, it provides a complete range of free medical services for lawmakers. No appointment needed, and no waiting. They just walk in and doctors, nurses, technicians, pharmacists, and other professionals tend to them right away. No bill is presented and no need to fill out an insurance form. They get what a former OAP staffer described as “The best health care on the planet.” Thus, members feel no urgency to reform the system, since it’s working beautifully — for them.

So, to get good care for all of us, the first step might have to be taking away the pampered care that lawmakers have quietly given to themselves.

Populist author, public speaker and radio commentator Jim Hightower writes The Hightower Lowdown, a monthly newsletter chronicling the ongoing fights by America’s ordinary people against rule by plutocratic elites. Sign up at HightowerLowdown.org.

Could Innovative California Lower Drug Prices For Everyone?

California may soon drive a hole through Washington’s tolerance for — and protection of — price gouging on drugs. A measure on the November ballot, Proposition 61, would bar state agencies from paying more for prescription drugs than the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs does.

Congress generally prohibits the U.S. government from negotiating prescription drug prices. The VA is an exception. Federal law ensures that it obtains a discount of at least 24 percent off a drug’s list price.

Other countries don’t let drugmakers abuse their citizenry with rapacious pricing. But the U.S. Congress does the drug industry’s bidding, defending business practices that bilk patients, taxpayers and anyone who buys health coverage.

That’s why Mylan got away with hiking the EpiPen price (for Americans) by 500 percent. It’s how Turing Pharmaceuticals could raise the price of a drug used by AIDS patients by some 5,000 percent.

California seems to be fighting back. As a buyer of drugs for about 4.5 million public workers, university employees and others, the state has market muscle. It can refuse to pay indecent price markups. (Prop 61 would not affect Californians on private plans.)

The pharmaceutical industry has amassed $100 million to defeat the measure. Practiced in the art of extortionate pricing, drug companies know how to wield a threat: They could refuse to sell their products to the state of California, depriving millions of needed medications.

But would that happen? I asked economist Uwe Reinhardt, the Princeton expert on health care. He thinks it unlikely.

As long as drug companies can make a profit on an already developed drug, they’re going to sell it. After all, they still make money on the drugs they sell to Canada and Europe at considerably lower prices. Other countries confront drug companies with take-it-or-leave-it propositions, and the companies relent.

We Americans, Reinhardt says, “seem haunted by the theory that unless we allow drug companies to charge us whatever they wish for a pill, innovation will stop. And we fall for that story.”

If Prop 61 became a reality, other state governments would not sit back and continue paying prices well above those charged California. So we have to consider the other scenario — that the drug companies decline to sell to California at VA prices. They would give up a large chunk of the California market but keep the price game going in the rest of the country.

Reinhardt doubts they would play this kind of hardball. Abandoning an entire market would destroy any goodwill they have with doctors and patients. The value of their company name, an intangible asset, could fall, spilling over into other things they sell. Thus, a drug company board member might think twice before authorizing that level of aggression.

Polls find 66 percent of California voters in favor of Prop 61. AARP and the AIDS Healthcare Foundation support the measure. Opponents include some patient advocate groups, fearing that the state’s refusal to pay up might limit their access to drugs. The industry, of course, is fanning those fears.

America’s drug pricing scandal reflects an odd imbalance in what we expect of fellow citizens. Our soldiers risk life and limb fighting terrorist regimes, but we seem unable to ask drug company executives to trim a few million off their exorbitant compensation for the good of the country.

Reinhardt asks, “Is it really essential to compensate the top five layers of executives of drug companies with boats and planes and villas in Tuscany to get these folks to innovate in drug therapy?” The answer is no.

It may take America’s innovator, California, to put an end to the drug pricing scam. Californians, do your duty.

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached atfharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

Our Sick Drug Business

Our Sick Drug Business

Sometimes the road to hell is paved with bad intentions. A company adopts a business model so twisted that justice must come clanking down on its executives and bankrollers. Justice is now being served on Valeant Pharmaceuticals International. Evil this blatant is headed for the full Hollywood treatment.

Valeant preys on sick people by acquiring essential drugs and then multiplying their price for a fast profit. Example: Upon buying the maker of Cuprimine, a 53-year-old drug that treats a rare genetic disorder, the Canadian company hiked its price 5,787 percent. Example: After obtaining the rights to two heart drugs, Isuprel and Nitropress, Valeant jacked up their prices by 525 percent and 212 percent, respectively.

Charlie Munger, the vice chairman of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, called Valeant a “sewer” at the conglomerate’s recent annual meeting. If the burning fires of hell are not available, a sewer will do.

Get this: Valeant charges Americans almost 100 times more for flucytosine than it does Britons. Used to treat cryptococcal meningitis, flucytosine costs $2,000 a day in the United States, versus $22 a day in Britain.

How could this be? Ask your Congress.

From the Medicare drug benefit on up, it has written laws to enrich drug companies at the expense of American consumers and taxpayers. Valeant’s going down not because it was greedy but because it was insanely greedy.

Calling Valeant a “drug company” is problematic because it’s not much into researching and developing new medications. “Bet on management, not on science,” its outgoing CEO, J. Michael Pearson, was fond of saying.

It takes some doing to provoke the U.S. Senate to hold a hearing on a drug company’s pricing. In this, Valeant (and previously Martin Shkreli’s Turing Pharmaceuticals) succeeded.

Under the harsh lights, Pearson conceded that his company made “mistakes.” His big mistake was not recognizing that even the most pliable champions of America’s medical-industrial complex have their limits.

Pearson’s description of Valeant’s program offering price breaks for hospitals that use some of its drugs didn’t glow for long. Hospitals responded that when they tried to obtain those alleged discounts, they got nowhere. Valeant didn’t answer their emails. It didn’t answer the phone.

What else made Valeant think it could get away with such anti-social behavior? No doubt Wall Street’s willingness to invest in its money-raking scheme contributed. Hedge fund giant William Ackman was Valeant’s leading pitchman, enticing other big funds to join in the pillage.

Valeant has problems in addition to a business model so repugnant it couldn’t be allowed to live. Among them is a high pile of debt. And its accounting practices aren’t so hot, either.

Thus, it’s no huge surprise that Valeant’s stock price has collapsed 85 percent since last summer. Ackman’s Pershing Square Capital Management and other hedge fund participants have lost billions.

Ackman told the hearing that his fund was not entirely aware of Valeant’s drug pricing policy. He was a “passive” investor, he said. Somehow the truth would have seemed less damning. Are we to believe that Pershing Square poured $4 billion into a company without inquiring as to how it made money?

In an almost comical exchange with the senators, Ackman said: “I totally get it. We’re going to come up with an appropriate (drug) price based on an appropriate rationale.”

All is not forgiven. Investors lost billions, but patients may have lost far more.

One hopes that spotlighting this egregious gouging on drug prices won’t deter attention from the lower-level daily gouging that our laws enable. The only remedy for that, frankly, is new lawmakers.

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2016 CREATORS.COM

Photo: The ticker information for Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc. is displayed on a screen above the post where it’s traded on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange November 4, 2015. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid 

How Big Pharma Is Trying to Improve Its Image

How Big Pharma Is Trying to Improve Its Image

Big news, people! Especially for those of you upset by the skyrocketing prices of the essential prescription medicines you take — including thousands of patients who were hit last year with a 5,000 percent price increase for one lifesaving drug!

Determined to do something about those despised price hikes, drugmakers themselves have reached into their corporate toolbox for the two most effective means they have to fix their price problem. Of course, putting more corporate cash into research to produce new medicines would be one of those tools, and a renewed commitment to honest competition would be the other, right?

Right! But Big Pharma gave up years ago on doing right, turning to two other corporate tools that have reliably generated a gusher of profits for them: advertising and lobbying. So here they come, wielding bigger-than-ever ad-and-lobbying budgets to deal with that pesky matter of public anger at price gouging.

If you wonder why Congress keeps ignoring what the people want it to do — while doing things that people don’t want it doing — take a peek at the unique PR campaign now being run by Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. PhRMA is America’s largest pharmaceutical lobbying group and represents Eli Lilly, Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck & Co and about three dozen other drug manufactures.

The intent of PhRMA’s multimillion-dollar PR blitz and intensified offensive in Congress is not to restrain the gouging but to improve the industry’s image in hopes of restraining lawmakers from taking steps to rein in prescription costs. Of course, the ads dishonestly fail to mention the selfish intent of being allowed to keep ripping off patients, instead pitching drugmakers as selfless saviors of humanity. They feature soft scenes of drug researchers in white lab coats urgently trying to find new cures, scripted testimonials from patients and of course scenes of drugmakers altruistically aiding poor people.

The American public is dismayed and disgusted by the flagrant greed of drugmakers that are shamefully zooming the prices of medicines into the stratosphere, turning necessities into unaffordable luxuries. As a result, there is a growing demand for Congress to take action to stop the industry’s out-of-control gouging.

Hoping to counter this demand for action, drug companies have launched their massive advertising campaign, not only running radio and print ads but also placing ads on Facebook, Twitter and other social media websites. Yet it’s not likely that you’ve seen or heard any of them. That’s because drug chieftains don’t care what you and I think.  Moreover, they know they couldn’t possibly persuade us to let them keep jacking up our prices. So, their “public” relations effort has made the odd and seemingly counterproductive move of sidestepping the actual public, instead narrowly targeting a very tiny audience.

As one CEO arrogantly put it: “We’ve identified 7,000 Americans who matter,” thus dismissing the other 330 million of us as nobodies. “We’re focusing on those in policy positions … to fight structural issues,” he sniffed. By “structural issues,” he means convincing Congress to take no action to reform the present pricing structure of monopolistic drugmakers, whose guiding corporate ethic is: “Bleed ’em for all they’ve got.”

So this is a surreptitious PR campaign meant to reach only the eyes and ears of policy elites. The goal is to have Congress — once again — ignore what the people want it to do, thus allowing the corporate few “who matter” to keep fleecing the many. The word for this is “plutocracy.” The industry is spending millions on this corporate medicine show not to protect its notorious profiteering but to protect you from public officials who might try to stop them from overcharging you. It’s enough to make you sick.

To find out more about Jim Hightower, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Web page at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2016 CREATORS.COM

Photo: Martin Shkreli, former CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals LLC, arrives before a House Oversight and Government Reform hearing on “Developments in the Prescription Drug Market Oversight” on Capitol Hill in Washington