Millions of Americans struggle on a daily basis to afford medicine in the United States which is the highest in the world. Many seek affordable drugs by driving to Canada or seeking medicine (as well as medical care) in India. Yet, one of the first things that President Obama did in the new health care law was to cave to a demand by the powerful pharmaceutical lobby to drop provisions guaranteeing cheaper medicine. The lobby then got Congress to block two measures to guarantee affordable medicine. With billions at stake, Congress and the White House again yielded to the demands of this industry, which is sapping the life savings away of millions of families. Given this history, many are concerned about a meeting planned between Obama and the Prime Minister of India. Public interest groups object that Obama is threatening retaliation against India in the hopes of blocking one of the major alternatives for families in acquiring affordable medicine. Congress has also again responded to industry demands for pressure in India to change its laws and, as a result, raise the cost of medicine. Doctors Without Borders, a highly respected medical group, has denounced the effort of the Obama Administration as threatening basic health care for its own citizens and those around the world.
Obama will meet with Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh this week at the White House to demand a change to its intellectual property laws. In addition to a long record of yielding to the demands of the pharmaceutical industry, Obama has also yielded to copyright and trademark hawks who has secured ever increasing criminal and civil penalties in the field. Here, the industry wants to cut off the supply of affordable medicine coming out of India due to its large generic drug industry. The industry is alarmed by the fact that India’s market is forcing the cost of drugs down for HIV, TB, and cancer by more than 90 percent.
Critics charge that Obama is basically reading from a script written by Pfizer and the industry in threatening retaliation if India does not change its intellectual property laws to limit the availability of generic drugs. There is no question that India’s legal system needs reform and intellectual property rules could be tightened. However, Doctors Without Borders insists that this is a raw effort to shutdown a country offering millions of people affordable medicine. If successful, the impact on the sick could be breathtaking if not life taking. Most AIDS drugs are generic and India supplies a huge amount of the HIV medicines.
The problem is that Indian courts have already supported the claims of Indian companies to produce such generics. For example, Novartis tried for seven years to block a low-cost generic salt form of the cancer drug imatinib, marketed as Gleevec. The Indian Supreme Court ruled that the company had every right to produce the drug and that the company, and by extension the U.S., was trying to impose effective monopoly pricing on consumers.
Likewise, a case involving Bayer shows how such inflated pricing works. Bayer lost an effort to block an Indian drug that slashed the cost of a kidney cancer drug by 97 percent. That’s right, 97 percent. Bayer wants to sell it as a cost of $4,500 per month.
Obama has increased the government paying for such drugs for the poorest Americans, but that healthcare deal still allowed drug companies to pull in windfall profits at public expense. Moreover, for middle income families, such costs (or the resulting higher insurance costs) have sapped away income at a time of diminishing wealth. The companies have a valid argument that some protection is needed to allow them to recoup billions in research to develop such amazing drugs. Intellectual property law encourage innovation by guaranteeing such profits that in turn encourage the investment in new research. However, with one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington (populated by former members and staff members who helped draft earlier laws), the drug industry has imposed obscene (and at times ruinous) costs on families who struggle to pay for life-sustaining medicine.
Doctors Without Borders is leading a campaign opposing Obama’s efforts to cut off the largest market for affordable drugs — a move that would leave families captive to the pricing set by these companies.
Off topic–but on the subject of drugs:
Krokodil, Flesh-Eating Drug, Reported In Arizona (GRAPHIC VIDEO)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/26/krokodil-flesh-eating-drug-arizona_n_3994912.html
Excerpt:
A homemade drug that causes severe damage to the flesh of those who use it has reportedly shown up in the U.S.
Previously reported in Russia, Krokodil, a disfiguring and potentially lethal mixture of codeine and hydrocarbons such as oil, paint thinner, gasoline or alcohol, has made its way to Arizona.
According to doctors at Banner Poison Control Center, two cases of the drug have been reported in the state in the past week.
“As far as I know, these are the first cases in the United States that are reported… We’re extremely frightened,” Dr. Frank LoVecchio, the co-medical director at the center, told KLTV.
Users filter and boil the drug before injecting it. Although LoVecchio said users believe the process removes the impurities, they are wrong.
Once injected, the drug causes damage to blood vessels and tissue that cause flesh to rot from the inside out. The horrific sores that some users develop resemble crocodile skin, which lends the street drug its name. The average life expectancy of a krokodil user is about three years, according to KSAZ.
Sorry Lotta, but the nation was ready for a single payer system in ’08-’09. Obama let his initial reform proposals twist in the wind like a pinnata over the course of the summer while the evening news was showing people going ballistic in all those congressional town hall meetings, his vaunted rhetorical skills and persuasive abilities nowhere to be seen. Senator Feingold, disgusted with final legislation, declared his belief that it was what Obama had in mind from the start: an industry designed program guaranteed increase profits.
Obama set out to prove to the oligarchy that a black man from the left side of the aisle can deliver without messing things up.
We should all be demanding that the Obama Administration be transparent regarding negotiations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).
*****
So-called free trade talks should be in the public, not corporate interest
Instead a negotiation process that is neither democratic and or transparent is likely to perpetuate a managed trade regime
By Joseph Stiglitz
Friday 5 July 2013
http://www.theguardian.com/business/economics-blog/2013/jul/05/free-trade-talks-public-corporate-interest
Excerpt:
Finally, there must be a commitment to transparency. Those engaging in these trade negotiations should be forewarned. The US is committed to a lack of transparency. The USTR’s office has been reluctant to reveal its negotiating position even to members of the US Congress – and on the basis of what has been leaked, one can understand why. It is backtracking on principles – for example, access to generic medicines – that Congress had inserted into earlier trade agreements, such as that with Peru.
In the case of the TPP, there is a further concern. Asia has developed an efficient supply chain, with goods flowing easily from one country to another in the process of producing finished items. The TPP could interfere with that if China remains outside of it.
With formal tariffs already so low, negotiators will focus largely on non-tariff barriers, such as regulatory ones. But the USTR’s office, representing corporate interests, will almost surely push for the lowest common standard, levelling downward rather than upward. For example, many countries have tax and regulatory provisions that discourage large automobiles – not because they are trying to discriminate against US goods, but because they worry about pollution and energy efficiency.
The more general point, alluded to earlier, is that trade agreements typically put commercial interests ahead of other values – the right to a healthy life and protection of the environment, to name just two. France, for example, wants a “cultural exception” in trade agreements that would allow it to continue to support its films – from which the whole world benefits. This and other broader values should be non-negotiable.
Indeed, the irony is that the social benefits of such subsidies are enormous, while the costs are negligible. Does anyone really believe that a French art film represents a serious threat to a Hollywood summer blockbuster? Yet Hollywood’s greed knows no limit, and America’s trade negotiators take no prisoners. And that’s precisely why such items should be taken off the table before negotiations begin. Otherwise arms will be twisted, and there is a real risk that an agreement will sacrifice basic values to commercial interests.
If negotiators created a genuine free trade regime that put the public interest first, with the views of ordinary citizens given at least as much weight as those of corporate lobbyists, I might be optimistic that what would emerge would strengthen the economy and improve social well-being. The reality, however, is that we have a managed trade regime that puts corporate interests first, and a process of negotiations that is undemocratic and non-transparent.
The likelihood that what emerges from the coming talks will serve ordinary Americans’ interests is low. The outlook for ordinary citizens in other countries is even bleaker.
PDM, “Trackback”, I do not think it means what you think it means. They are linking to Turleyblawg, not the other way around. And it’s not a link to NBC Sports, it’s to a blawg that is encouraging people to let NBC Sports know that you don’t think their animal killing show is cool- if in fact you do not think it’s a cool show.
American Exceptionalism at its best!….
Tension? What tension? This is nothing — let me tell you of a project where the singer died only one day after I was informed of the fact that my production didn’t have the rights to the deceased singers work, but there was a $250,000 budget the singer had already spent.
Really, this is nothing.
Where’s Act Two?
Something to break the tension:
pdm,
You still here? Do you always talk to yourself?
Don’t cr*p out on me , Gene. I’ll man up if I’ve failed to, as you so aptly put it, Enlighten you, but I’ll meet you at the OK Corral tomorrow at high noon for my Come to Jeebus moment.
Gene, you’re awfully quiet…
should be….just above the leave a reply window.
Causal question. Look at the Elephant poison post. Note no souce shown in the usual spot immediately following Turley”s blog. Now go to the bottom of the page – just about the “Leave a Reply” window. There you see a link to NBC sports. I think that is pretty good evidence that that is Turley’s source and not the other way around.
Gene. The link is right in front of your eyes.
Go to where you would type your comment. Look up about one inch. There you will see TURLEY’S link to “Dan’s World.
But maybe Dan’s World shows up if a commentor reblogs to that site? I checked commentors who noted they re-blogged on another site and that action does not show up (under the last, most current comment). And if you click on the link to Dan’s World, its headline is an exact quote of Turley’s quote.
I will be happy to apologize if I’ve got it wrong and you are certainly in a position to confirm or deny after checking with Turley.
But I still wonder why he is no longer listing sources immediately following his post as he always has in the past and is instead placing them in a sort of “footnote” position.
You provided no link, pdm.
I might also add that you providing a link to Dan’s World and, even if they have a story on the same topic, is not evidence of causal connection.
So again: None of the original columns here cited linked to refer to Dan or Dan’s World. The one external reference is indeed to Doctors Without Borders. So please. Enlighten us as to your evidence and reasoning behind a seemingly baseless accusation.
Gene, The link to Dan’s World (could I make that up?) is to be found beneath the last comment. I at least takke some solace that you, too, are disgusted that he would use (and QUOTE) such a source.
Mike,
I also suggest you catch “Beware of Mr. Baker“, a documentary about the real Ginger. He is a fantastic drummer. He’s also arguably a lunatic in a tangible diagnostic sense of the word. To say he’s “socially awkward” is a huge understatement. I caught it on TV one night during a bout of insomnia. It was very interesting. Especially his relationship with Eric Clapton.
OS & Gene,
Ginger Baker was perhaps the best drummer to come out of my era, though Levon Helm and Kreutzmann/Hart were my personal favorites when it came to Rock. When he backed Bruce and Clapton with Cream it was known as the first Rock N’ Roll super group. Now if you’re looking all time then you’ve got a lot of others to consider including Krupa, Blakey and Roach,
Our Gingerbaker is obviously flakking for the pharmaceutical industry and hence a drummer, which is a formerly slang term for a traveling salesman. My guess is he has some commercial connection with the pharmaceutical industry and so has a perspective skewed by financial self-interest. In my analogy though I didn’t mean to imply her/his “greatness” by comparison to Baker. Far from it in that his defense of the industry is so obvious.
Not Baker’s best performance but my favorite Cream song:
Mike,
The original Ginger Baker is not the most sweetness and light character one would ever meet. Reporters who have interviewed him say they were glad when the interview was over and they could leave. Perhaps this tells us something. On the other hand, there are polyphonic polyrythmic masterworks:
Let me get the gloss off my lips; then I might say something worthwhile.