Drug busted

Big Pharma’s Stranglehold On Drug Prices

By Ann Werner 

Everyone is familiar with Martin Shkreli, if not by name, then by his actions. Shkreli is the hedge fund manager who took the price of Daraprim from $13.50 a pill to $750. That’s a price hike of 5555.56%. 

When confronted about it, Shkreli’s attitude was: What do you care? You’re not paying for it. Your insurance company is.

Daraprim is not a generic, but it has been around for so long that it has been grandfathered into the current FDA regulations. It has paid for itself many times over, but due to FDA rules, the price can be raised to any level and no one bats an eye.

What most people don’t realize is this is not new. Prices of grandfathered and generic drugs have been steadily rising, and because the cost of them is hidden to consumers and even to doctors, most people don’t realize the extent of the rise. 

But you do feel it when your insurance company raises your monthly premium. You just don’t know why that premium is going up. So, depending on which side of the fence you’re on, liberal or conservative, you assign blame. Liberals blame the greedy insurance companies and conservatives blame Obamacare.

You know who else feels it? People with pets who need medications. Yesterday I took my cats in for their shots and my vet was talking about the high cost of keeping her facility open due to having to stock drugs that were once inexpensive but are now incredibly pricey. Tetracycline, for example. 

That drug has been around since God was a child, so one would think you could get it for pennies a pill. And that used to be the case. Not any more. I don’t recall the number of pills she was talking about, but I do remember the figures she threw out. 

What used to cost her $10 is now $1,000. That’s a hell of a hike. She lamented the difficulty of getting liquid valium, which is used when she operates. She said that she’s had to use phenobarbital instead and finds it inferior to the liquid valium. 

She suggested that instead of medical doctors being consulted on drug price issues, perhaps it would be better to have some government input from veterinarians because they are much more in tune with the reality of what has been happening.

A CNN article penned by Medical Correspondent Elizabeth Cohen in 1998 illustrates that this is anything but a new trend. From the article:

The average wholesale price for 500 tablets of a diabetes drug called chlorpropamide, for example, has increased from $35.15 to $138.97A blood pressure pill called methyclothiazide has gone from $19.06 for 100 tablets to $49.64.The price of 1,000 tablets of lorazepam, the second most popular generic anti-anxiety drug and sold under the name Ativan, has more than quadrupled from $179.95 to $796.67.And a prescription for a drug that cost $10 last month is now nearly $90.”

It’s no secret that drug prices in this country are through the roof and going higher. It’s also no secret that Americans are prohibited from buying those drugs from overseas markets where they are drastically cheaper. You can thank the powerful drug lobby for that.

If you think the FDA would go to bat for the American consumer, you would be mistaken. And now, President Obama has named Dr. Robert Cardiff, a man described as “the ultimate industry insider,” as his nominee to head up the Food and Drug Administration. 

See the attached information and petition to the Senate to block the nomination. Senator Bernie Sanders is opposing the nomination and, together with Maryland Representative Elijah Cummings, introduced legislation on September 10 to rein in soaring drug costs.

Big Pharma, Big Oil, Big Banks, Big Money. We are held captive at every turn by a system that values money above all else. The sad thing is that people are so easily manipulated to vote against their own best interests. 

And even when they do vote their interests, gerrymandering negates those votes. We are in a place in this country where we have become slaves to the moneyed interests who view all of us on the lower end of the scale as expendable.

It doesn’t have to be this way. It won’t change overnight. Too much damage has been done in the past 40 years. It will take time. The only way to effect the change we so desperately need is to get engaged, get active and work to inform others, and then go cast your vote. 

Not just in the upcoming primaries, not just in the presidential election, but in every single off year election held. It’s a numbers game. Even gerrymandering won’t be able to stem the tide if millions mobilize and cast their votes to take back our government from the wealthy capitalists who literally profit from human suffering. 

Otherwise nothing will change, and the only people we will have to blame are ourselves.

Ann Werner is the author of thrillers and other things. Visit her at Ann Werner on the Web