Tag: Big Pharma

Profiteers vs Patients: The Two Faces of US Healthcare

Suspicious Angels Leave a comment

Hospital Bill

It’s a country where more than 355,000 people die every year from untreated health problems. 14% are regularly denied medical care because of an unpaid bill, often less than $100. 34 million have friends or family members who died because they could not afford medical care. Unbelievably, it also happens to be the richest country in the world. It’s the U.S. where life expectancy is the lowest of all the advanced economies of the world. Despite a $4.3 trillion price tag, the U.S. healthcare system never fails to disappoint. Unregulated and privatized, healthcare in the U.S. takes its toll on virtually every American. Who’s guarding the hen house?

Government regulators are rewarded with lucrative job offers if they look the other way and they do. It’s a system where the winners are few and handsomely rewarded and the losers are everybody else forced to make do with an industry that puts profits ahead of patients. Only those with a strong stomach should read “Profiteers vs Patients: The Two Faces of US Healthcare.”

Loading

Read More

Promising to Keep the U.S. Safe and Healthy, Military Contractors and Big Pharma Executives Cash In — Part 2: Pharma Execs on the Hot Seat

Suspicious Angels Leave a comment

Politicians Cash In

True or false — highway robbery by the drug companies is the price we pay for innovative research? Judge for yourself — U.S. is the only high-income country that does not negotiate drug prices with big pharma. In the first half of 2019, the price of 3,400 drugs in the U.S. increased, but not in Europe. If Medicare, the largest buyer of medicines in the U.S. and together with Medicaid in the world, starts negotiating prices what are the consequences? The sky won’t fall but drug companies will be forced to do less profiteering. About that drug company-inspired myth that the end of outrageous pricing spells the end of innovation—guess where the research for the successful Pfizer mRNA vaccine originated — in drug price-regulated Germany. As a myriad of studies have found, industry’s enormous profits since the 1970s—the most profitable U.S. industry — have nothing to do with the amount it invests on R&D. What makes them rich is aggressive marketing and over the top pricing in the U.S. Two factors which cut Americans’ lives short. Even before the pandemic, Europeans lived three years longer than white Americans and six years longer than black Americans. “The greed of the prescription drug industry is literally killing Americans. All over this country, the American people are asking a simple question: How many people need to die, how many people need to get unnecessarily sicker, before Congress is prepared to take on the greed of the prescription drug industry.” [Bernie Sanders]. But feel-your-pain rhetoric won’t cut it anymore. The men and women we elect to Congress and to the White House should be answering these questions with action. Why aren’t they? Want to get the real skinny on the failure of politicians to stand up to Big Pharma when it counts? First buy a pitchfork and then read “Promising to Keep the U.S. Safe and Healthy, Military Contractors and Big Pharma Executives Cash In — Part 2: Pharma Execs on the Hot Seat.”

Loading

Read More

Getting Away with Murder: Big Pharma’s Chickens are Coming Home to Roost

Suspicious Angels Leave a comment

Sackler Empire

Now you see it, now you don’t. Which cup is the pea under? It’s a sucker’s game and America’s giant corporations have been playing the American people for decades. When exposure of their dirty dealings is imminent, there’s always a charity willing to perform cosmetic surgery for the right price. The drug companies have always been hugely successful at using philanthropy to hide their criminal behavior. The Sackler family, owners of the now-infamous Purdue Pharma which is internationally reviled for its killer drug OxyContin, has thrown money at such distinguished charities as Harvard, Columbia, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Smithsonian. While the right hand is doling out the goodies, the left is producing a highly addictive opioid that currently has 200,000 victims and makes life miserable for hundreds of thousands more. Serial murderers to the core, are the Sacklers spending the rest of their lives in the slammer? Not exactly. Their sins have made them the nineteenth richest family in the U.S. with a fortune of $13 billion. While drug companies distract you with their “good works,” the pea is hidden under the cup labeled profits. Meanwhile the body count keeps rising. SA takes the gloves off in “Getting Away with Murder: Big Pharma’s Chickens are coming home to Roost.”

Loading

Read More

Pound for Pound: The Growing Girth of Americans Means Big Profits for the (Fast) Food and Drug Companies

Suspicious Angels Leave a comment

The whole world is watching as Americans pack on the pounds. The latest report released by federal health officials last week (March 23), confirms what a 15-minute stroll around any Walmart in America would prove- we’re putting on the pounds at break neck speed. According to the CDC, “obesity is common, serious and costly.” As to “common,” – in 2007-2008, one-third of Americans were obese (BMI of 30 plus). In 2012, a mere four years later, 35.7% of Americans had waddled into the obese category. From that point to today, Americans have been loosening their belts at warp speed.

Loading

Read More