Sovaldi and the related pill Harvoni cost Medicare and
Medicaid more than $5 billion in 2014.
After an 18-month investigation into the high cost of
Gilead's hepatitis C drug Sovaldi—initially listed at $84,000 for a course of
treatment or $1,000 per pill—the Senate Finance Committee said the prices did
not reflect the cost of research and development and that Gilead cared about
"revenue" not "affordability and accessibility."
In 2008, the Texas attorney general's office charged
Risperdal maker Janssen (Johnson & Johnson's psychiatric drug unit) with
defrauding the state of millions "with [its] sophisticated and fraudulent
marketing scheme," to "secure a spot for the drug, Risperdal, on the
state's Medicaid preferred drug list and on controversial medical protocols
that determine which drugs are given to adults and children in state
custody." The Texas attorney general's office charged Janssen with bribing
Texas' mental health officials with trips, perks and kickbacks. Janssen also
paid drug company-funded front groups, disguised to look like patients, to
"give state mental health officials and lawmakers the perception that the
drug had widespread support," reported Bloomberg. Many alleged patient
groups agitating for approval of expensive new drugs or fighting so-called
"barriers" to treatment and mental illness "stigma" are
actually slick drug company marketing creations. Many are entrenched in schools
and on college campuses to capture "psychiatric patients" at an early
age, often ensuring decades of sales. In Texas, a Medicaid "decision
tree" called the Texas Medical Algorithm Project was instituted that
mandates doctors prescribe the newest and most expensive psychiatric drugs
first. The program was funded, not surprisingly, by the Johnson &
Johnson-linked Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
The Department of Veterans Affairs spent $717 million on 5
million prescriptions of Risperdal to treat post-traumatic stress disorder in
troops deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq only to discover after nine years that
the drug worked no better than a placebo, reported the Journal of the American
Medical Association (JAMA) in 2011.
According to New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, the
drug industry spent $272,000 in campaign donations per member of Congress last
year. He reports that there are more drug company lobbyists than members of
Congress.
Of course, Big Pharma aren't the only corporations that is
ripping the people off big time. It is simply that Big Pharma is just more
disgusting because it directly impacts a person’s health, in addition to their
wallet. They are creating a nation of prescription drug addicts by making
normal human behaviors a disease or a syndrome. Big Ag is another behemoth
entity gambling with people’s health to make a profit.
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