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Pfizer is a med company. They negotiate with insurance. They work together to fuck us over.
It's a pharmaceutical company. They're no saints, but it's disingenuous to compare them to people who take money and provide nothing but a rubber stamp.
Did everyone forget about scumbag Martin Shkreli who raised medication prices for no reason other than he wanted more money?
"In September 2015, Shkreli was widely criticized when Turing obtained the manufacturing license for the antiparasitic drug Daraprim and raised its price to insurance companies from $13.50 to $750.00 (USD) per pill."
Martin worked at Retrophin and Turing Pharmaceuticals but mostly he was a hedge fund manager.
Got nothing to do with Parker or Mangione.
It's called an example of behavior.
Its a very common thing that happens in human conversation.
Alright well in that case all non-alcoholics and painters are literally Hitler.
We both know the ultra wealthy have a well recorded history of disregarding ethics and human rights when it comes to obtaining more wealth.
I don't know why you decided you dislike my perspective so much, but I'm good. Have a nice day sir or madam.
Pfizer still got billions from the government and was allowed to patent Covid vaccines that we all fucking paid for.
Also their dick pills are covered by insurance while meds my wife needs to make it through perimenopause aren’t.
Pfuck them all. Drug companies are at least half the problem with US healthcare, look at what Perdue and the Sacklers did.
Pfizer being allowed to patent Covid vaccines was a failure to govern, you should never have expected anything less than that from any company but rather you should expect more from your government.
Their pills being covered or not has nothing to do with the manufacturer. The entity who covers treatment made the decision.
Let's make a hypothetical where all drug companies are as bad as Purdue, then we would have to get rid of them all. OH WAIT! Whats this? The Covid Vaccine never gets made? Nobody is working on the new H5N1 vaccine? Well, I guess we'll just have to watch half of us die or be permanently disabled, lol. Organized medicine can't be allowed, after all. /s
They don't even do that. Their incentive is to deny coverage. They're not healthcare insurance companies, they're healthcare rationing companies. And we pay them.
The providers (hospitals, clinics, labs, doctor practices), insurers/payers (whether for profit like United, nonprofit like most Blue Cross Blue Shields, or government like Medicare), and pharmaceutical/medical device companies fight each other the whole time to make the most money off of the patients/beneficiaries/taxpayers. Big Pharma runs up prices and persuades doctors to prescribe their treatments, while doctors themselves have a profit motive in running up unnecessary treatments, all while insurers try not to pay for stuff, necessary or not.
It's a broken system, but it's also worth pointing out that the scammers in each camp hate the other camps just as much as the public does. There are hospital execs and pharma execs basically cheering on the anger at insurers, who will turn around and rip off the same victims in a different way.
Your final point I think is out of focus. The scammers, which is to say most people at upper level positions in these companies, they just don't respect human life at all, and they'll take money wherever they can get it. It's not a matter of hating people. They don't respect people to begin with, so they have no need to hate them.
I think a lot of the profiteers in this space believe their positions are important and improve health outcomes, and that what's good for the world is good for the company. Pfizer will tell their investors that inventing a life saving drug (e.g., a COVID vaccine) will be good for health, and that the shareholder therefore deserve to make a hefty profit from it.
Same with the hospital execs. They'll pat each other on the back about how much good their hospital does, and see the very expensive billing department as an important function in their war against insurers.
And actual scammers, who bill for services not actually rendered, order unnecessary procedures, and prescribe the drugs the pretty rep is pushing, tend not to think they're doing anything wrong or that they're not hurting people.
People in each of these groups are saying in hushed tones that the insurance companies had it coming, and kinda sorta cheering the death of the United guy with their caveats ("well I'm not saying murder is OK but I'm not shedding tears," etc.).
Yes and thats because the solution isnt to put different people in charge of the companies. The solution is to Regulate.
The corruption is because we voters built the system to enable corruption. None of us are better than the executives or vice versa
You are right about human nature and the need to regulate, but us voters didn't build shit. Crony capitalism and regulatory capture built our healthcare "system."
In 2010 there were 58 Democrats and they held a vote for Single Payer healthcare. Every Republican voted no. One Independent voted yes. It needed 60.
So what did voters do after that? Elect LESS DEMOCRATS EVERY ELECTION.
If that isn't choosing this system, I don't know what is.