A Prescription for Plutocracy: Is Washington hopelessly gridlocked? Not when the rich need help.

[marmar]

from Too Much: A Commentary on Excess and Inequality:



A Prescription for Plutocracy
Is Washington hopelessly gridlocked? Not when the rich and powerful need help. The latest evidence: the just-released official analysis of the first full year of the new Medicare prescription drug benefit.
January 14, 2008

By Sam Pizzigati

Imagine yourself the CEO in an industry that has been registering record profits year after year — mainly by overcharging consumers for products they feel they literally can’t live without. But suddenly you find yourself with a problem: Your products have simply become too costly for consumers to afford.

So what do you do? You convince lawmakers to plow billions of taxpayer dollars into a program that will help consumers pay for your overpriced products. Problem solved. You can now, as a certified CEO genius, look forward to years of windfall rewards.

This scenario sound far-fetched? You haven’t been paying attention. This scenario has actually just unfolded — in the pharmaceutical industry.

Big Pharma, as the industry has become less than affectionately known, entered the 21st century the most profitable industry in the world. In 2002, notes Harvard Medical School analyst Marcia Angell, the top 10 drug companies in the United States netted more earnings than all the rest of the companies in the Fortune 500 taken together.

Big profits like these translated into hefty paydays for top Big Pharma executives. In 2001, the five most lavishly compensated drug company execs averaged over $30 million each. Three Big Pharma execs entered that year with at least $131 million worth of stock options they hadn’t yet cashed in.

The fuel for these big earnings: revenues from outpatient prescriptions that were rising at a remarkable 15 percent annual rate. By 2002, 12 cents out of every dollar Americans were expending for health care were going for prescription drugs. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.cipa-apex.org/toomuch/articlenew2008/Jan14a.html

[Big Blue Marble]

1. Add to this these drugs are often making people sicker

and sometimes killing them. The drug industry is one of the biggest rackets in human history.
And our society has fallen under its spell.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2688760

[Hydra]

2. Notice the corps get anything they want

despite the "gridlock." SCOTUS just handed them a freebie, too.

Christmas every day for them.

[Big Blue Marble]

5. The Democrats are complicit.

[malaise]

3. They certainly own the Rethugs

but sadly the Dems are catching up for 2008.

http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.asp?Ind=H04

[TwilightGardener]

4. Except for Chris Dodd, they're not deadlocked on helping the telecoms either--

immunity is a bipartisan giveaway.

[DEMorthem]

6. STOP.STOP,STOP

MARKETING PRESCRIPTION DRUGS DIRECTLY TO CONSUMERS!!!!!!! these fucking companies now spend HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS IF NOT BILLIONS of dallars each year INVENTING ailments they can sell drugs to cure!! watch a little TV and check out the BULLSHIT!! scare tactics and warnings!! crap! the friggin side effects are WORSE than the ailment!! this shit needs to STOP!!!

[hfojvt]

7. you seem a little stressed

maybe you should ask your doctor about nexium. It's purple.

[slor]

14. Careful...is nexium one of the...

"oily discharge" as a side effect drugs?

[wryter2000]

9. Welcome to DU

:hi:

[midnight]

8. Last Sunday Elizabeth Edwards was interviewed on one of those

Morning talker shows. Sorry I don't remember. Anyways she indicated exactly what you have stated. Big profits and being the most profitable industry in the world. This was until Dick Chaney's private energy meeting's in his fourth branch of govt. No energy is. Big surprise. She said Americans should get the price break that big pharma gives all the other countries.

[jgraz]

10. Wow. I'm so glad Obama's going to give these people a seat at the table

:eyes:

[marmar]

11. Can we please keep the Hatfields v McCoys feud out of this thread?....

Is no thread safe from it? :shrug:

[jgraz]

12. So you're just posting about it, but you don't want to actually do anything about it?

How else to you expect to solve this problem if we don't put the right people in charge?

:shrug:

[OneBlueSky]

13. as many of us said at the time, Medicare Part D is a welfare program for drug companies . . . n/t