GOOD NEWS! ... SORT OF

Today I read some very positive sounding news: The on-line journal VOX reports that "A group of hospitals is banding together to produce cheap generic drugs to fight off egregious price hikes and drug shortages. The not-for-profit venture is called Civica Rx, and the company announced itself last month. A collection of 22 hospitals in the Salt Lake City area called Intermountain Healthcare, the Mayo Clinic, the for-profit health care facilities company HCA Healthcare, and some philanthropic foundations are pulling together to form the firm."

Wonderful!  They're looking to produce drugs generic drugs that are in short supply, or whose prices have skyrocketed  -- or both. For example, IV bags, injections for sundry anemic problems, tissue numbing agents, have been reported in very short supply, not to mention drugs that treat Parkinson's disease, chemotherapy drugs, and a tablet to treat C.O.P.D.  -- chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

All this, Vox reminds us, is happening against the backdrop of the Justice Department and 45 states being  "currently in court accusing generic drug makers of price fixing and costing Americans more than $1 billion for their medicines."  Vox goes on to say that  "We spend a lot of time on new brand-name drugs, but some of the most egregious examples of price hikes have been for generic drugs."

Amazing! No less than Jeff Bezos, chief of Amazon, had tried to go up against the behemoth of Big Pharma but had to back down, lacking the infrastructure and the complex network of customer relationships that Big Pharma has built up over the years. Yet now, these folks think they can do what Bezos couldn't? 

They have a very good chance. Part of Big Pharma's network of customer relationships was with hospitals, but a good part of the new group are themselves hospitals! They're not trying to develop any new drugs, but simply to make old ones that the drug industry, doubtless for monopolistic reasons, had allowed to get very scarce. Yes, the FDA will have to give its approval, but with the collective bona fides of  the new venture, that may not be at all impossible. The new firm will start off with 14 drugs yet to be named. "Experts," says Vox, "are cautiously optimistic." 

And you thought that Big Pharma was unassailable!  But don't start dancing quite yet. Yesterday I read of a study which proved that doctors who were given free meals were much more likely to prescribe the new, branded, proprietary drug pitched by the rep who was paying for the meal!  Researchers had already established that doctors who had been set up with speaking engagements would be far friendlier to the folks who set them up -- and the drugs they were selling -- than they otherwise would have been.

Let me tell you something: For years and years, the Health Industry has been wallowing in their own private Capitalistic heaven, enjoying obscene profits untrammeled by the regulations they would face in any other country. And do you think they are going to give all that up with out a fight? Do you think they won't pull out every trick in the book, to threaten,  lie, distort, suborn, seduce -- whatever it takes for them to hold on to their cushy situation? Ladies and Gentlemen, what we're up against here is class war.  Actually, we've been it it for a long time, but not many knew it.

But now, as the Bible says, it's time for us to "gird our loins with strength," and fight for our lives -- literally. I'm not talking pitchforks; it hasn't come to that yet, thank God. What I am talking about is linking arms, for unity is our strength. Our job is to form a unified front and show our state lawmakers that if they don't pass the New York Health Act (Single Payer for New York) we'll vote them out. Period. Many of them were very happy to vote for it when they were sure that the Republicans in the Senate would shoot it down.  But since that's now far less likely to happen, these so-called progressives may remember the money that got them elected,  and where it came from. They'll have a change of heart and reconsider, UNLESS WE HOLD THEIR FEET TO THE FIRE. What fire?  Why do you think I've been sharing these tales of  rapacious capitalists whose stupendous salaries we've been paying for with our blood -- to fuel the the fire of our outrage, our determination.  There'll be more of the same, God willing, together with some sense of what Single Payer is, and why I can think of no  other cure for the sick morass that is healthcare in our country.

Dio

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The Event in Troy, New York

Yesterday, a coalition of  healthcare professionals, unions, and activist groups gathered at the Troy Hilton Garden Inn to picket the annual conference of the New York Health Plan Association, a trade association for the state's health insurance companies. It was frigid out there, but my wife and I were glad we showed up, pickets in hand. We wielded our home-made placards, which read,

BIG PROFIT$

FROM

PAIN?

$HAME 

ON YOU!

and we shouted chants like

HEALTHCARE IS A HUMAN RIGHT --

NOT JUST FOR THE RICH AND WHITE!

Sometimes, in the hope that the the NYHPA would hear us, the Chant Leader aimed his bullhorn up to where they were meeting. They had assembled, after all, mainly to figure out more ways to oppose Single Payer healthcare in New York, by promoting what they called the "realities" of Single Payer.

In the first page of our Press Packet I found the following powerful snippet:

But even more striking was the testimony of a nurse, delivered powerfully through the bullhorn:

"We nurses get to see pain and suffering up close. One day, when I was tending to a patient, I overheard through the partition what was going on with his roommate. This poor man, a truck driver, had a 95% blockage in his heart. His nurses were trying to ready him for the surgery, and they told him that the operating room was being prepared  for him. But he told them that he'd rather not have the surgery because he doubted his insurance would pay for it. They begged him to go through with it: After all this was a life he was talking about -- his own life -- which was priceless. But he said no -- he'd rather leave. And he did -- he just got dressed and walked out the door. I never knew what happened to him."

But my wife and I felt that we knew. Rather than saddle his family with crushing debt, this poor man felt it was better to die. Effectively he was committing suicide.  He felt that he was too poor to live.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez famously has said that nobody should be too poor to live, and I agree with her. 

After all that, the "big secret" that I touted in yesterday's "teaser" turned out not so important.  But for what it's worth, not only did our group have demonstrators outside, I learned that we had operatives on the inside as well. Through an ingenious scheme that I'm not at liberty to disclose, they found a way to infiltrate the meeting, and some had even volunteered to disrupt the meeting, even though it could mean being arrested. There was even someone appointed to tend to these people should they land in jail!

But so far as I knew, none of this came to pass. The "suits" somehow got wind of the resistance outside, and just to be safe, they ended the meeting an hour early, whereupon a few of our leaders went to the Aetna headquarters in Troy. What happened there I have yet to find out.

There was a brief  break for lunch; our host was a personable young actor and writer. I asked him if he thought this was a class struggle. 

"Certainly I would," he replied. It's been going on for years, but only now are we wising up to it."

"Class warfare?" I offered.

"That, too. People are dying."

Dio

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