Big Pharma charges $189,000 for a 100% taxpayer-funded drug. No to Fed Rate hike. We need a cut.

Big Pharma charged $189,000 for a prostate cancer drug developed 100% with our money. Feds bailed out billionaires but continue to raise or keep interest rates high. These are taxes on the rest of us.

Big Pharma

Big Pharma charges $189,000 for a 100% taxpayer-funded drug.

I was a member of a panel a few years ago. It consisted of four people, as I recall. We had a conservative, a right-of-center businessman, and a left-of-center liberal blogger. And as you guessed, I was the Progressive. We started talking about policies, and the arguments we are used to from the right-of-center came up often. Things like the moral hazards of having humane policies were discussed. But what drew my ire was when we agreed on some needed policies to help families, the first thing out of the conservative businessman’s mouth was how the necessary policies would affect business. I exploded civilly. I shouted, “You do not change humanity, and human needs to fit business. One must adjust the business to work with the human condition.” The businessman has no comeback. After all, his statement, when analyzed, was anathema to the purported values of the right.

I bring that up because our government, we, the people, have a choice in determining what is best for humanity versus what is beneficial for the huge profits of Big Pharma. Americans paid to develop the prostate cancer drug Xtandi. Yet we must pay $189,000 per year to use the drug. Common Dreams reported the following.

Patient advocates on Tuesday blasted the Biden administration’s refusal to compel the manufacturer of a lifesaving prostate cancer drug developed completely with public funds to lower its nearly $190,000 annual price tag.

In 2021, prostate cancer patient Eric Sawyer petitioned U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra to grant march-in rights—under which the government can grant patent licenses to companies other than a drug’s manufacturer—for enzalutamide, which is sold under the brand name Xtandi by Pfizer and Japanese pharmaceutical giant Astellas.

The drug’s development was 100% taxpayer-funded. Yet a one-year supply of Xtandi currently costs $189,800 in the United States, or up to five times more than its price in other countries.

HHS’ National Institutes of Health (NIH) said Tuesday that it “does not believe that use of the march-in authority would be an effective means of lowering the price of the drug.”

The agency added that it “will pursue a whole-of-government approach informed by public input to ensure the use of march-in authority is consistent with the policy and objective of the Bayh-Dole Act,” a reference to legislation meant to promote the commercialization and public availability of government-funded inventions.

James Love, director of the Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group Knowledge Ecology International, called the administration’s rejection “appalling.”

“What the Biden administration is saying is that charging U.S. residents three to six times more than any other high-income country is reasonable,” he wrote.

U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee Chair Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said in a statement that he is “extremely disappointed that the Biden administration denied a petition by prostate cancer patients to substantially reduce the price of Xtandi.”

“This is a drug that was invented with taxpayer dollars by scientists at UCLA and can be purchased in Canada for one-fifth the U.S. price,” Sanders added. “The Japanese drugmaker Astellas, which made $1 billion in profits in 2021, has raised the price of this drug by more than 75%… How many prostate cancer patients will die because they cannot afford this unacceptable price?”

In other words, it is not about humanity and fairness first. It is about Big Pharma holding America, hostage with a false premise. They want us to believe that innovation and discovery of new drugs would stop if they were not allowed to gouge us. This drug proves that innovation and risk-taking occur on the taxpayer side and not sufficiently on the corporate side to justify their profits for adding little value.

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No to Fed Rate hike. We need a cut.

It is time for the Feds to undo the damage they are doing to the American poor and middle class. Our inflation was not caused by the Trump/Biden stimuli when the American people were in dire straights as the economy understandably came to a pause. Representative Katie Porter was kind when she only attributed ‘more than 50%’ of inflation to greedy corporations. The reality is they should take 100% of the blame for their ineptitude.

Corporations chose to offshore labor at the same time they instituted just-in-time inventory, which ensured there would be shortages of imported parts and goods. That was their irresponsible business choice. They chose to coddle a president that was mismanaging a not-yet-pandemic, which caused a full-blown pandemic that hit the United States, a first-world nation, harder than most third-world countries.

As corporations chose to rip us off with higher prices instead of passing laws that make it criminal to harm Americans unduly through pricing on products and services we must have, the Fed Chair, Jerome Powell, is forcing Americans to pay for the ineptitude of corporate executives.

The Federal Open Market Committee meeting today marks the first time the Federal Reserve will meet following the bailout of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank. Groundwork Collaborative’s Chief Economist, Rakeen Mabud, released the following statement:

“While the Federal Reserve wasted no time protecting wealthy venture capitalists and startup CEOs last weekend, it has shown little concern for the millions of people who could lose their jobs as a result of its aggressive rate hikes. 

“After the SVB fiasco, Chair Powell should not touch rate hikes with a ten-foot pole. Another rate hike will be the straw that breaks the camel’s back, sending our economy into a painful – and completely avoidable – recession.”

I agree with MAGA on one thing, partially. It is time, not time to take our country back. After all, from its inception, it was created for the wealthy few. As we liberalized, educated ourselves, and learned to start asserting our worth, we consistently made progress in bringing more into the real middle class. But for the ruling class, we are at critical mass. Further liberalization, education, demanding our correct share of the pie, and worth assertion are a threat to those whose wealth is nothing but our unpaid labor and growth.

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