Epipen (Adrenaclick) Price War
CVS has introduced a generic version of the essential emergency self-injector Epipen (containing epinephrine for acute allergic crises) that is said to cost $109.99, approximately what the Epipen cost before Mylan purchased the rights to the product and increased the price to $600.
This is a good example of the evils of privatization. A company with a competitive advantage (the exclusive rights to produce a medicine essential to the welfare of many Americans) raises the price repeatedly and without cost justification to benefit their bottom line profits. There are no upsides to the situation: the company with the advantage does nothing to compensate for the inflated and unjustifiable price, and there are no benefits offered to the general public to use up the profits contemplated: all profits go the the stockholders.
Here the profit motive, basic to capitalism, has distorted the price of an essential (life-saving) drug and caused difficulties for the public, particularly those who can ill afford to purchase a product that they require to occasionally save their lives.
This is not “privatization” per se because the government never had a hand in producing the product; however, the development of epinephrine (adrenaline), an essential drug that comes in many forms, was done by scientists many years ago who had support from the government in one indirect way or another.
Here is a story in NBC News on the likely motivation for the price hike by Mylan: their CEO’s pay was raised 600 percent afterwards. The story points out that as Mylan made a succession of price increases for the drug from its purchase in 2007, its stock prices more than tripled and pay for top executives was increased proportionately. In addition, sales of the drug provided 40 percent of the company’s operating profits in 2014, according to Bloomberg News. The Bloomberg article also discusses the heavy marketing applied by Mylan to the sales of Epipen.
The reports on this product are available from a number of sources; the earliest appear to be from Ars Technica and Market Watch. There are also stories in United Press International, USA Today and NBC News. There are stories in the Huffington Post, Daily Kos (a Democratic organ), and an ad from CVS itself. If you want Donald’s screed on the subject, try this story in USA Today. Russia Today (RT) has a story claiming that Mylan will lose $800 million this year due to the introduction of CVS’ generic version. Norman DeGreve, the chief marketing officer for CVS, posted the story on Twitter at 5:45 AM yesterday.
In other news, last December 23, Mr. DeGreve posted a chart from Nielsen showing that younger Americans have suddenly stopped watching television.
(The image above is the picture of the day from Wikimedia Commons: Block P, Speicherstadt, Germany.)
Privatization is Wrong
“There’s a magical thinking among business executives that something about the profit motive makes everything run better,” noted Raymond Fisman, a professor of economics at Boston University. “What is government going to be like when it is run by billionaire C.E.O.s that see the private sector as a solution to all the world’s problems?”
A serious body of economics, not to mention reams of evidence from decades of privatizations around the world, suggests this belief is false.
Many studies show what makes perfect sense: you get worse service and pay more money when you mix the profit motive with essential government services. Every time. There’s no room for profit when you are performing an essential service that people don’t want in the first place. Profit is only useful as a motive when you are dealing with things that people want. The idea that profit can make things you don’t want better is just perfect for providing graft and that’s what Donald really wants: handles to pass out graft money so he can milk the economy, the same way Vladimir Putin is doing– only Vlad is a much younger, tougher guy and Donald is just a big fat orange narcissistic slob.
Vladimir Putin is Blackmailing Donald
CNN’s story says it all: the classified intelligence briefing was reported by multiple people in the know to have said that the Russians have damaging personal and professional (business) knowledge about Donald and they are obviously willing to use it if he doesn’t do things the way they like it– especially if he allows NATO to defend itself against a Russian takeover of the Baltics and maybe even Poland.
This conclusion is so obvious and so logical that it surprises me that it hasn’t come up before. Donald did some bad things because he thought he could get away with them. You name the bad things– it doesn’t really matter whether it was wife-beating, dog-beating, or masturbating because we know that if it got out, it would be grounds for impeachment that even the Republicans couldn’t deny.
It’s not emails that he wrote because Donald never wrote any emails. It is things he did, personally and business-related, and especially business, in which he was in bed with people connected with organized crime. He took money from criminals to build his hotels and golf courses, and he cashed in on those projects and left other people, innocent naive people holding the bag for the bankruptcies. The Russians have all the details– Donald tried to keep these things secret, but you can’t keep secrets from the criminals who gave you the money.
The CNN story is here.
For further details, see this Mother Jones story that ran in October but failed to influence anyone. Apparently a British former spy has been investigating Trump in the pay of Republicans who don’t like Donald and Democrats as well. He provided his information to the FBI starting in June and more fully in August. Unfortunately none of this was front page news and everything is, of course, denied by Donald and his friends (what makes anyone think that Donald would admit any of this? Why bother to ask him unless you think his denials are somehow credible? You know he’s been shown to lie repeatedly and obviously in the past so why listen to him now?)
What is worst is that the story is so totally credible in terms of who Donald is and who Vladimir Putin is that no one should doubt it for a moment.
Gordo in a Tree
This is old, but here it is. They proved, with a ten year direct observation study that the carbon-dioxide caused greenhouse effect is real and climate change is getting worse due to increasing carbon-dioxide: physics dot org article published February 25, 2015 says so.
Michael Mann Proceeds in Court
Michael Mann has sued his defamers in court, and his lawsuit is winning the right to proceed to present his case before a jury. Not a final victory, but a great advance in his fight to regain his good name. Read about it here, in the scienceblogs website. Lawyers, take notice: you may be able to help in this fight to level the playing field against people who have repeatedly defamed the climate “alarmists.”
Earth and Moon: From Mars Orbiter
Donald’s Russian Connections: A Run-Down
Apparently Donald, our new president, has numerous connections to Russian and Russian-American kleptocrats and gangsters, and has depended upon them for a huge quantity of loans to finance his capital projects (buildings, mostly hotels). The details are too complex and entangled to even begin to list here, but there are obvious motivations for his work with Putin in stealing our most recent presidential election. A long article has just been published in The American Interest, and is available for your free perusal at this address (it’s your only free article this month in this magazine, so read it carefully before closing the page.) It was written by a lawyer who specializes in investigating crooked banking interests named James S. Henry. If you have time (at least two hours to read this article through), it will benefit you to discover just how heavily entangled Donald is with the Russian-American mob and Russia’s gangster-in-chief, Vladimir Putin.
This is a re-post because I’m not happy with the way Facebok treated my first try.
Donald’s Russian Connections: A Rundown
Apparently Donald, our new president, has numerous connections to Russian and Russian-American kleptocrats and gangsters, and has depended upon them for a huge quantity of loans to finance his capital projects (buildings, mostly hotels). The details are too complex and entangled to even begin to list here, but there are obvious motivations for his work with Putin in stealing our most recent presidential election. A long article has just been published in The American Interest, and is available for your free perusal at this address (it’s your only free article this month in this magazine, so read it carefully before closing the page.) It was written by a lawyer who specializes in investigating crooked banking interests named James S. Henry. If you have time (at least two hours to read this article through), it will benefit you to discover just how heavily entangled Donald is with the Russian-American mob and Russia’s gangster-in-chief, Vladimir Putin.
Beautiful Earth Views
Check out the views of Earth by this astronaut who spent over 500 days in space:
Conrad Theodore Seitz 