Hey! What about the pricing of drugs to the average American Worker?
19
The global South and Asia are set to become the biggest markets in the world in the next fifty years. These actions by Pharma are, I fear, simply strategic market development (akin to the drug dealer’s dime bag) with a thin veneer of marketing spin on top. I hope governments in these developing countries take advantage of their emerging market power now and put the Pharma beast in chains before they do to the global South and East what they have done in the USA. I’m told that only the most unwise turn their backs on a dozing crocodile.
12
I think this is wonderful and should be applauded. That said, what about Americans who can't afford the meds? We have them. Drug companies need to lower their prices for those of us in this country who are without care and are dying before they get to that point.
10
I am an AIDS activist here in Miami. We have an immediate emergency need for 1000 housing units for people living with HIV. Year after year we are told there isn't enough money for housing and supportive services. And yet Medicare and Medicaid spend over $20,000 per year per person with HIV on medications alone. The American taxpayers are getting ripped off. Drug companies are rolling in dough. And meanwhile the poor people with HIV in my community are bouncing in and out of homeless shelters and friends couches. If our medication costs were cut in half (which is still more than 10 times the cost in the developing world) we could end the homeless problem and wait list for mental health services. Outrageous!!
15
Rather than demonizing pharmaceutical companies (which they still do when these businesses act charitably), perhaps those with such a strong moral compass would best serve the down-trodden by developing, manufacturing and distributing life-saving medicine for them. Oh you don't have the billions to do so, and can't get highly trained professionals to work for free? Yet you expect a private business to do these things? Perhaps save your moral outrage for something else.
10
Too little. Too late.
Big Pharma aka Big Drug is by nature and nurture a moral degenerate corrupt crony capitalist corporate plutocrat oligarch welfare cowardly evil malign immoral inhumane scheme.
New gilded age robber baron malefactors of great wealth.
Bust them up! Fine them up! Lock them up!
15
They shouted down the drug companies, but they couldn't shout down political correctness, which opposed quarantine that could have prevented the transmission of the disease.
1
Richard, WHO tells us quarantine is never the most effective way to prevent transmission of a disease. Have you ever tried to keep a grounded teenager indoors when he/she is highly motivated to get out? My daughter’s quarantined friend managed to go out regularly during the SARS scare in Toronto, in spite of some fairly stringent measures. Thankfully, she never did get sick, nor did the friends, restauranteurs or video store customers who came in contact with her.
Besides this, your point is in error. Public health officers are only interested in what works, not “political correctness.”
3
"Once demonized as immoral profiteers, many of the world’s biggest 20 pharmaceutical companies now boast about how they help poor countries and fight neglected diseases."
And there you have it.
Faced with more anger than recent memory allows, caught with the biggest fattest fingers ever in the cookie jar ("We are all Martin Shkreli...") and defending it as their right to crush consumers because business, things got so bad there was even rumbling in the Halls of Government.
Not that it would have come to anything...it never does. But still, ''better safe'' as they say.
So, you help 'the poor' with your cheapest run of the mill meds for a while. The poor, who would never even think of your $30,000-a dose-super-spectaculars anyway.
And you lay on your oldest, least-in-demand (sadly, AIDS is a declining market though, an unexpected ray of sunshine, measles and Ebola seem to be picking up lately).
These are not good guys. These are not responsible or compassionate corporations. These are people facing the most serious threat in a generation in the only way they know how.
You notice they would rather give away the farm than permanently lower prices on any serious medication. They would rather people go under than allow imports from the septic wilds of, oh, Toronto.
Not good people.
Even Bugsy Malone bought flowers for the church...it was Bugsy, wasn't it?
21
@oogada I wish I could recommend 100 times.
8
No they will not, only money motivates them, remember!
4
Big Pharma is no better than Big Tobacco. It's all about the Benjamins, nothing more. They will take advantage of whatever they can to make more.
23