QUICK READ: There was hope that all the negativity towards pharma would start to evaporate as they worked on a vaccine for COVID-19 but that goodwill is being eroded by an industry whose master is Wall Street, not patients.
Bad pharma
QUICK READ: People are living longer with a better quality of life thanks, in part, to prescription drugs. When a news story breaks about pharma greed the whole industry pays a price and goodwill can be wiped out in an instant.
- [inlinetweet prefix=”” tweeter=”” suffix=””]After reporting a 45% increase in quarterly profit Pfizer said “it’s business as normal”.[/inlinetweet]
- Drug companies have made clear that they’ll never voluntarily reduce prices.
- The pharma industry has spent more than $216 million on lobbying this year.
- “Telling companies to voluntarily lower their prices and expecting it to happen on a consistent basis is not a realistic long-term policy proposition,” said Anthony T. LoSasso, a professor of health policy and administration at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
KEY TAKEAWAY: After raising prices on all its drugs in 2017 Pfizer has given their CEO a total 2017 compensation that spiked up 61% to $27.9 million. At the same time Allergan rewarded its CEO Brent Saunders with a $32.8 million pay package—an eightfold increase over 2016. Despite PhRMA’s social media blast about the root cause of drug prices the media have pharma in their sites once again.
KEY THOUGHT: Pharma companies that put profits above patients should be called out and the people who insist that profits are maximized at the patient’s expense should be given a kick in the arse.
KEY TAKEAWAY: The idiocy of raising a price on a prescription medication over 5000% and the current series of articles on J&J’s marketing of Risperdal is enough to turn even supporters to haters of big pharma.