Easy Pickings
The meme screams out, “Insulin prices skyrocket, putting many diabetics in a bind,” as if this really comes as “news” to us these days. American pharmaceutical companies are to the sick and elderly, what a spider pouncing on a writhing fly in a web is, except that diabetes patients, along with the sick and elderly, are not despicable, nasty flying nuisances: They are human beings.
How many of us have family and close friends who are afflicted with diabetes? Apparently, enough people do, prompting the American Diabetes Association to issue a call for Congress to investigate insulin pricing, and come up with solutions so that people with diabetes aren’t faced with financial hardship when obtaining that which keeps them alive.
My, that is a novel thought and one that has evidently never occurred to an industry, that prides itself on providing life-saving drugs-at a cost. Pay-to-play is the name of the game, and unfortunately, Big Pharma holds all the cards.
Asking Congress, however, is a joke. The members of Congress are the biggest pack of hypocrites and liars ever assembled in one place, purporting to represent the American people. They represent folks all right, those belonging to the elite one percent, because that is the source of their money.
What do you do when you find that the medication for your sick kid, is going to cost more than your paycheck? I’ll tell you what you do-you do anything you have to. You begin by getting scared and then angry.
You think of the brakes on the car, and how they’ll have to wait; you think of the braces that your middle school daughter needs so badly, and how they’ll have to wait; mostly, you think about your plan to finally get out of this gnarly rental unit, and into a real home, and you know that will have to be put on hold-probably forever.
Insulin was first discovered in 1921, by Doctor Frederick Banting, who sold the patent for a dollar, to the University of Toronto. Imagine that! The guy who invented the stuff was willing to give it to humanity for a buck.
Of course, the University of Toronto could not meet the demand, so it sold the patent to the pharmaceutical companies. Want to bet that the price remained the same? No, neither do I.
Big Pharma is comparable to General Electric, a corporate conglomerate that pays no federal income taxes. Big Pharma is a blood-sucking spider, ugly, vile and obese, spinning its web incessantly over the weak, the ill and the elderly, because, why not?
Them’s easy pickings.
Who defends the weak and elderly, at the corporate level? The same folks who stand up for the 50 million people at-or near-the poverty level, including the nineteen million kids. That would be no one.
Who at the corporate level defends sick children, who will die if they do not get a life-saving medicine? No one defends these kids.
Why are there no restrictions against blood-sucking spiders, disguised as American businesses? Because restrictions are bad for business, and America is all about business.
Besides, dead people need coffins, speaking of business.
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