This Shkreli thing is bugging the sh*t out of me.
Here's the link to the actual article, which has the (enraging) title 'Why We Need Martin Shkreli.'
http://www.businessinsider.com/why-we-need-martin-shkreli-2015-12
So...let's talk about that. Especially let's talk about the part where the author says, 'When Shkreli speaks bluntly about the needs of shareholders, without the buzzwords and public relations scripts, he makes big pharma very uncomfortable. Because he's telling the truth. "It’s a business; we’re supposed to make as much money as possible," Shkreli said at the Forbes Healthcare Summit last week, where his attendance was the buzz of the conference. If anything, he said, he would've raised the price of Daraprim higher.'
To me, this represents a moral issue; specifically it represents a HUGE, gross, bloated, swollen conflict of interest that victimizes ALL but very rich Americans.
The only thing that I actually agree with the article on is where it says that England sells the drug for $20, and the difference between that and the USA is that our government can't negotiate drug prices because a) the people we have elected to uphold our interests in Washington DC are corrupt liars who are on the payroll of big pharma, and b) we don't have single payer healthcare like EVERYONE ELSE IN THE CIVILIZED WORLD because of a) above.
The moral issue is this: the mandate to maximize return for shareholders is in direct conflict with the mission of the healthcare system to prevent and cure illness. There just isn't any way around it. If you're a CEO you a) gouge patients to maximize profits wherever you can, and b) work very hard to avoid paying for care patients need so costs can be cut.
That is just.................wrong.
I mean, between my employer and I, we pay 18.5% of my gross so my wife and I can 'enjoy' shitty, rationed healthcare from an HMO that cares far more about keeping costs down than actually giving us treatments we need. My wife has suffered for years with doctors that don't want to do more expensive treatments or more extensive tests because they are pressured by the HMO to keep costs down, and we can't afford the huge copay for surgery ($3 grand right there. Each. So if we both have to have surgery, it is $6 grand out of pocket. Each year. We just cannot afford that, so the woman I love continues to suffer, which makes me feel like shit, but I myself am physically incapable of working harder by getting a second job - I just can't do it any more.)
The other thing here is that this shitty HMO we have has raised prices double digits each year for the last DECADE. Every year, HR summons us into a room and they tell us how we are going to be paying higher premiums and higher copays for less service because it's the best our HR people can negotiate because my employer is relatively small with fewer than 4,000 employees.
There's NOTHING that can convince me that single payer wouldn't be a whole world of improvement over the sucky excessively expensive system we have now, and anyway, they are OUR tax dollars. It pisses me off that we have to do bullshit things with OUR tax money like funding wasteful immoral wars when we SHOULD be taking care of the needs of our people. That in itself is a scathing indictment of the corruption in our whole system. The corruption of neoliberal 'free market' capitalism, which eats at all of us like a cancer.
As to Shkreli - try that son of a bitch and put him in a cage for the rest of his life. THROW AWAY THE KEY.
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