Richard
Wolff explains briefly and clearly the evil mechanism that the Big
Pharma found to maintain huge profits, passing the bill to the
workers:
The
drug prices have been going up so high that more and more Americans
who are covered with a medical insurance, say from where they work or
if they work for the government, they still have to pay a deductible.
And the deductible is now so high - because the cost of the medicines
is so high - that people avoiding to go, even when they're covered,
because they can't pay the deductible.
This
is terrible for the drug companies because if you don't go to get the
medicine because you can't cover the deductible, the prescription
isn't written and the drug company hasn't got the sale. They don't
care who pays them, whether is you or the insurance company, they
just want to sell the damn thing. So it's a problem for them that
people can't afford the deductible.
And
they came up with a genius answer. They set up foundations with
lovely, warm names. Do you know what the foundation does? The drug
companies give the money to the foundation, the foundation gives the
money to the poor to pay the deductible because that still leaves a
mammoth profit. Now the poor can go, have their deductible taken care
by the very company that is overcharging the insurance company for
the rest of it.
But
if you think that it allows you to escape, it doesn't.
Because
when the insurance has to pay these crazy prices, they turn around
and charge your employer more money for the policy that covers you as
a worker, at which time the employer says to you either 'you're
fired, I'm not gonna pay that', or, 'I'm going to deduct out of your
weekly check more and more'. There is a strike going on, right now.
Subsequently,
Wolff gives an example showing that workers' unions refuse to accept
contracts with low raises because in the end they will see their
income further reduced due to inflation and due to this trick by the
Big Pharma, described above. Still, it seems that this leaves the Big
Pharma untouchable because it transfers the conflict to the
employers-workers level.
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