Hightower: Pharma Identified 7,000 Gov Officials They Need to Control to Run Their Price Gouging Op

Hightower: Big Pharma Identified 7,000 Govt Officials They Need to Control to Run Their Price Gouging Operation

The industry's spending millions to protect you from public officials who might stop them from overcharging you.

Jim Hightower / AlterNet February 18, 2016

Big news, people! Especially for those of you upset by the skyrocketing prices of the essential prescription medicines you take — including thousands of patients who were hit last year with a 5,000 percent price increase for one lifesaving drug!



Determined to do something about those despised price hikes, drugmakers themselves have reached into their corporate toolbox for the two most effective means they have to fix their price problem. Of course, putting more corporate cash into research to produce new medicines would be one of those tools, and a renewed commitment to honest competition would be the other, right?

Right! But Big Pharma gave up years ago on doing right, turning to two other corporate tools that have reliably generated a gusher of profits for them: advertising and lobbying. So here they come, wielding bigger-than-ever ad-and-lobbying budgets to deal with that pesky matter of public anger at price gouging.

If you wonder why Congress keeps ignoring what the people want it to do — while doing things that people don’t want it doing — take a peek at the unique PR campaign now being run by Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. PhRMA is America’s largest pharmaceutical lobbying group and represents Eli Lilly, Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck & Co and about three dozen other drug manufactures.

The intent of PhRMA’s multimillion-dollar PR blitz and intensified offensive in Congress is not to restrain the gouging but to improve the industry’s image in hopes of restraining lawmakers from taking steps to rein in prescription costs...snip
Read More: http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/hightower-big-pharma-identified-7000-govt-officials-they-need-control-run-their

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In the US, everything and almost everyone is for sale. Everything.

And when Pharma can't buy what they want- they resort to Bribery. What a disgrace.

GlaxoSmithKline fined $490m by China for bribery
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-29274822

Big Pharma's Pathetic Medical Bribes are Quite Profitable
http://www.alternet.org/drugs/big-pharma-simple-trick-obscuring-medical-bribes

Many More Examples: https://www.google.com/search?&q=pharmaceutical+bribery