“In so many other ways, these are good people. But, little by little, they strayed from the honorable business of feeding people appropriately to the deplorable mission of “increasing shareholder value” by enticing people to consume more and more high-margin, low-nutrition branded products...I left the industry when I finally had to acknowledge that reform would never come from within. I could no longer accept a business model that put profits over public health” confessed Michael Mudd former executive vice president of global corporate affairs for Kraft Foods.
The United States costs more than it does anywhere else. Two of the five most profitable industries in the United States — the pharmaceuticals industry and the medical device industry — sell health care. With margins of almost 20 percent, they beat out even the financial sector for sheer profitability.
“In my view, health is a business in the United States in quite a different way than it is elsewhere,” says Tom Sackville, who served in Margaret Thatcher’s government and now directs the the International Federation of Health Plans — a global insurance trade association. “It’s very much something people make money out of. There isn’t too much embarrassment about that compared to Europe and elsewhere.”
Banking companies engage in accounting fraud. Food companies are virtually drug-pushers, knowingly striving to hook us on dangerous combinations of fat and sugar. Pharmaceutical companies withhold information about the toxic risks of medications to which they hold patents and then continue to spend more to market those drugs than to discover new medications. Fossil fuel companies fund efforts to create doubt in scientifically well- established climate science.
In a capitalist world profits and wealth are the ends in themselves. Anything that maximizes profits is regarded as fair business practice.
The United States costs more than it does anywhere else. Two of the five most profitable industries in the United States — the pharmaceuticals industry and the medical device industry — sell health care. With margins of almost 20 percent, they beat out even the financial sector for sheer profitability.
“In my view, health is a business in the United States in quite a different way than it is elsewhere,” says Tom Sackville, who served in Margaret Thatcher’s government and now directs the the International Federation of Health Plans — a global insurance trade association. “It’s very much something people make money out of. There isn’t too much embarrassment about that compared to Europe and elsewhere.”
Banking companies engage in accounting fraud. Food companies are virtually drug-pushers, knowingly striving to hook us on dangerous combinations of fat and sugar. Pharmaceutical companies withhold information about the toxic risks of medications to which they hold patents and then continue to spend more to market those drugs than to discover new medications. Fossil fuel companies fund efforts to create doubt in scientifically well- established climate science.
In a capitalist world profits and wealth are the ends in themselves. Anything that maximizes profits is regarded as fair business practice.
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