Drugs And Corruption-- No One Has Ever Figured Out How To Separate Them... Too Much Cash At Stake

My friend John is in Paris. My friend John is always in Paris. He lives there half the year and in DC the other half. Why would someone waste half a year in DC? What a wretched place... with the worst excuses for human beings in the entire country (not counting Wall Street)! Anyway, yesterday John filed a story from Paris how how much more we in America-- thanks to the Republican, Blue Dog & New Dem corporate hacks who take massive bribes from Big Pharma-- pay for ordinary drugs, the pharmaceutical ones, than people in Europe pay. "The money I save on my asthma drugs by buying them in France rather than in the U.S. (at Costco) will pay for my flight to Europe and then some," he wrote.

The first drug is Symbicort. Note that both drugs, the US version and the French version, are made and sold by the same pharmaceutical company, AstraZeneca. This isn't some cheap knockoff-- which is the lie the FDA is spouting to justify this rip-off of the American taxpayer-- it's the same company charging 3.5x the price when it sees that your passport says "American." ...[N]ote that the French version and the American version of Singulair are made and sold by Merck & Co. Merck marks it drug up by 400% when it sees that you're American.

...Why do companies like Merck and AstroZeneca charge Americans nearly four times what they charge Europeans for certain drugs? Because they can. European governments refuse to let companies like Merck and AstroZeneca make such obscene profits on their prescription drug sales, so they tell those companies that if you want to sell your drugs in Europe, you're going to lower the price and only make a "reasonable" profit.

So what do the drug companies do? They cut their prices in quarter in Europe, and then quadruple the prices in America to make up the difference.

Americans are quite literally subsidizing cheap prescription drug prices in Europe (we are in essence paying a drug tax forced on us by both political parties) and we have both Democrats and Republicans in Washington-- who are all beholden to Big Pharma-- to thank for it.

This is part of the conservative definition of freedom/liberty-- the freedom and liberty of corporations that pay off corrupt politicians to rip off consumers. Blue America-endorsed congressional candidate Dr. David Gill (D-IL) says John's examples are "yet one more example of a health care 'system' which isn't focused on health care."

The fact that we pay exorbitant fees for needed medications in this country is another ramification of a system in which the big pharmaceutical companies litter the hallways of Congress with their lobbyists. In the Emergency Room, I bear witness to many examples of just how short-sighted, wasteful and cruel our system is. I recently had a patient in a diabetic coma, near death. We resuscitated him and sent him to the ICU for a lengthy stay. He had been laid off from his job 3 months earlier and eventually was unable to afford $8 for his insulin; so now, we will all pay $60,000 for his hospital bill. It's long past time to end such inhumane and illogical care-- Medicare for All will make America much healthier and much wealthier. I'm proud that my campaign refuses all funding from the drug and insurance companies, and I look forward to getting to Congress and being a leading voice in bringing us a health care system that puts the focus upon care, rather than the maximizing of investor return.

On Wednesday after the GOP and 5 slimy Blue Dog corporate whores voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act, Dr. Lee Rogers-- running for Congress against Insurance Industry shill Buck McKeon-- did a series of press conferences across his district at hospitals and medical centers laying out concrete and specific bipartisan plans for improving the ACA. All 6 are great proposals but take a look at this one:

Allow Medicare and Medicaid to negotiate drug prices

The United States carries the pharmaceutical research and development burden for the entire world. We are essentially subsidizing the lower drug prices in wealthy countries like England, Germany, France, Canada, and Japan. Americans should not pay more for the same medication than they do in other developed nations. Medicare and Medicaid should be able to negotiate drug prices like the VA, DOD and other nations. I also understand it is costly to develop new medications. Patents should be extended a minimum number of years from the time the drug goes on the market and not start the clock while it is in development an unable to be sold.

John Conyers (D-MI), one of the most dependable champions of working families in Congress, is the senior Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee-- and he's been fighting for fair pharmaceutical policies for Americans for decades. It's an uphill battle against conservatives and he's never giving up. This is how he put it to us last night:

The reason drugs cost more in America than anywhere else boils down to a single factor: profit. The drug companies have the highest profit margins of all American corporations. Their profits as a percent of sales run about 19 percent, compared to a median of about 5 percent for Fortune 500 companies.
 
I find it incredibly ironic that the people who embrace the competitive benefits of the free market oppose drug re-importation or allowing the Medicare program to negotiate prices with the drug companies. They seem to have abandoned two of their favorite principles-- the unconstrained operation of the free market and low government spending-- in order to protect that outrageous profit margin for the pharmaceutical companies.
 
 
Health care must not be a market commodity. The market dictates that one’s ability to consume a particular product should be constrained by one’s ability to pay. This approach may be feasible when applied to hamburgers or tennis shoes, but it is unacceptable when it comes to health care. Our ability to get health services should be constrained by only one thing: what our doctor thinks we need. Profit should not be a factor.
 
That’s why we need to build on the reforms in the Affordable Care Act, allow for drug re-importation from other industrialized nations, empower Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices, and ultimately enact a single-payer health care system that establishes health care as a universal right.

Bribing Members of Congress is a cost of doing business for Big Pharma. Lobbying and bribing congressman (which in reality is just giving them their cut of the profits of what they rip off from American consumers) is nothing compared to what they spend on advertising. As for who to bribe... they have it down pat. Here are the Big Seven for the 2012 electoral cycle:


Some of the worst of the Democratic corporate whores-- your Hoyers, Crowleys, Mathesons... that ilk... Ron Kind, Allyson Schwartz, Jason Altmire, come a little further down the list. But look who they picked for the really big bucks. Obviously Cantor, Boehner and McCarthy control the House agenda, so they automatically get their cuts. Fred Upton is the Chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee and Pitts chairs that Committee's subcommittee on Health and Eshoo is one of the senior Democrats on the Committee. And Dave Camp is the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee and chairs the Joint Committee on Taxation. For a few paltry bucks to a handful of greedy corrupt Members of Congress, Big Pharma gets to charge American consumers 400% more than people anywhere else for the same drugs. What could be better?

Dr. Syed Taj is the Democrat running for the now empty Thaddeus McCotter seat in the Detroit suburbs. He thinks John Aravosis hit the nail right on the head... and he knows why:

Much more than just dollars and cents are at stake in the health care and pharmaceutical industries. When insurance companies raise rates or deny coverage to increase profits, or when pharmaceutical companies increase costs because the demand will be met regardless, the wellbeing and general health of millions of people are affected. When middle-class Americans are forced to pay upwards of $8,000 a month for cancer treatment medication, it’s obvious our priorities are not in the right place.

It’s been shown that drug companies price discriminate-– they sell drugs in Canada and elsewhere for less because they know they can still hike prices in the United States. This is proof that a laissez faire pharmaceutical market does not work; the
greater the profits for drug companies, the sicker and poorer people become. Congress should intervene by introducing price ceilings in exchange for investing in research and development. Rather than companies price gouging because they lack competition, we should be pricing drugs according to their expected benefit to the population. Drugs are also cheaper in France because their companies have lower liability costs-– they’re much less likely to be sued than in the United States and for much less when they are sued. This means we need major tort reform.

Mr. Aravosis is exactly right: we are subsidizing the costs of socialized medicine without any of the benefits of lower costs and a healthier society. Medicine in France, the United Kingdom, Italy and other top-rated health care systems is so much cheaper
because they took a proactive role in reducing those costs to insure greater health to their citizens. Our federal government should be leading the way.

Progressive doctors Matt Heinz (D-AZ), Captain B.J. Hunnicut (MASH, Korea), Lee Rogers (D-CA)