If you need prescription drugs to live a better life or to save your life and live in the United States, you are being “ripped off” by the pharmaceutical companies. If there is a single issue which demands universal healthcare in the form of ‘Medicare for all,’ it is the greed of an entire industry.
The stories are too numerous to tell in one, short article. There are thousands of reports of how the pharmaceutical companies raise prices on drugs by as much as 1,000 percent because they can. There are virtually no enforceable regulations for an entire industry.
Why should Ian C Read, the CEO of Pfizer receive a base salary of $27,913,775 per year? Pfizer’s number one selling drug is Prevnar, a drug claiming to prevent pneumonia. A single vaccination in the United States averages $237.45.
On average, prescription drug prices in the U.S. are three-times higher than in any other nation. In Canada and throughout Europe laws exist which prevent ‘price gouging.’
Currently Congress is investigating escalating drug prices in America. Republicans are encouraging the CEO’s of all major pharmaceutical companies to refuse answering questions related to pricing.
The House Oversight Committee is conducting the investigation. Radical members of the right-wing extremist group the “Freedom Caucus,” Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows, advised the CEO’s not to offer information to Chairman Elijah Cummings because he “could leak the information requested in an effort to tank their stock prices.”
Conservatives claim to be concerned about government waste, but they encourage big business to “rip off” the American people to protect the price of their stocks.
Republicans continue to prove that they have no interest in serving working class Americans. Price gouging is not the only crime committed by the drug companies. Misrepresentation by the entire industry is responsible for the opioid crisis; which continues to grow under Trump’s watch. Doctors were told that these pain relievers were not addictive; an intentional lie. Pharmaceutical companies profited billions of dollars last year while 75,000 Americans lost their lives from a drug overdose.
Finally, a fact the right-wing doesn’t want you to know. The United States has the worst healthcare system of all developed nations. The fact that Republicans don’t want you to have healthcare is proof that they are the enemy of the people. Time for change.
For 30 years the current Republican Party in name only has placed profits for big business ahead of the welfare of our nation’s people. Vote them out of Washington and out of your lives. This is our country, not theirs.
“The Truth Lives Here”
Op-ed by James Turnage
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