USA Charges $28,000 for a simple drug
A great article on perhaps one of the most egrecious problems in the world, USA drug companies, patents, and global enforcement of those patents using all tools including military blockades. The shocking case where a $100 drug is $28,000 is due to monopolies and global patent enforcement, causing unneccessary suffering and death purely for profit.
Great advances for hundreds of years in public health came with democracies and public institutions developing drugs, and an honest, unselfish society. Tax payer funded universities, which produced public research for the world to benefit. Honest people with values produced medicines, and things like Polio eradication was done with the UN, WHO, and of course because Salk rejected patents.
The USA model: tax payer funded research at public institutions and universities is locked up into corporate patents, provided to specific corporation for monopoly use. That this is allowed is quite unbelievable, and shows democracy is useless. Obama's great achievement in health reform was a law that nobody read before becoming law, with negotiated in secret with drug companies (immediately reversing his primary campaign pledge), and was voted on purely based on party-line voting (the signal of kickbacks). Of course it extended patent protections, and just raised taxes to cover the high deductable private health insurance for a relatively small number of people per the cost, a boon for insurance companies and drug companies. Of course, as usual, the name of the bill - Affordable Care Act - did the opposite, increased the cost of health care.
At the end, from wikipedia, around 20 million people got private insurance help over 3 years to 2016 from taxes of around 16.3 billion per year...ie. tax payers for forced to pay almost 50 billion, which was siphoned directly to private insurance companies, which then either reject insurance claims, or pay drug companies the absurd monopoly prices....citizens lose health, and all the money is transferred to insurance or drug corporations. Private Insurance is NOT healthcare...it is basic preditory private health insurance with high deductables. The real health outcome? --- Health care outcomes declined, costs went up, and life expectancy in the US continued to decline.
It is no wonder health outcomes comtinued to decline, and for multiple years the US life expectancy itself has declined, unprecented for centuries.
The decline is purely political, as companies pay off law makers, FDA, and CDC for patent control. These companies gain oligarch status with absurd profits, most people can't afford neccessary drugs and die, and the riches are used to bribe even more ... more politicians ... more regulalors ... in a cycle that self perpetuates. The corruption can never reverse, and no 'voting' will ever alter it.
Patents have no benefit, and are illegal in a free market, yet corporation advertising actually have people convinced patents are good for research. It is the opposite, and as we see in Covid-19, US has no associated better research for vaccines after decades of absurd profits at the expence of the public health. The opposite is true, the best and most used vaccines come from Germany - Biontech, UK Oxford University (AstraZeneca), Russia (Sputnik-V), China (Sonovac, CaronaVac, and others). Do you think corporate owners use their profits for research or the common good? They use it to buy 200ft yachts. Research does not need money, even Cuba, with US miltiary blockade for decades on everything down to medicines, produced the Abdala Vaccine on par with the best in the world.
Most troubling is the US attempted hostile takeover, political interference, and exclusivity attempts by the US of Germany's Biontech which would have left the world with US control of this vaccine.
Outbreak of Delta in Singapore thanks to politicians and brothels
As usual, corruption and politicians bring about disastrous health consequences.
Politicians crushing livelihoods of regular people, while acusing outbreaks while they excempt themselves is the most common problem of transmission throughout the world. One would have thought Singapore is above this...nope.
Singapore politicians, while blockading travel down to their own citizens, freely are allowing in and out prostitutes from around asia (whose clientele are obvisouly all through the highly paid government.
Even more outragious is the politicians quietly allowed KTV bars (brothels) to continue on while banning dining for the regular people!
Australia in National Emergency due to Fedex
Not to single out Singapore, this is the same the world over.
Australian politicians were immediate is blocking all travel from China (due to geopolitics) and India (due to racism), but of course leaves open the US... the epicenter of Covid-19 and the worst place on earth in handling the disease.
Sydney's current outbreak, spreading Delta Variant all across Australia and put half the entire Australian population in complete lockdown with no dining, is due to USA persons. While Australia citizens are completely blocked from coming in or out of the country... US corporations that pay corrupt politicians are excempted from protols, to come and go with the virus. US military personal still flying in and out infected without protocol (corrupt politicians excempt this for national security!), and infected fedex personal flying in and out (corrupt politians paid off to allow this). While the government blames Australians for the outbreaks, fedex continues business, continues to pay off corrupt politicians, and the military games continue.
Australia could simply ban Fedex for causing the outbreak, and make them pay the $2 billion per week the lockdown directly attributed to. But no, fedex continues business and Australians lose their jobs and income.
US Military Assaulting Australian Locals
As typical in every country where they 'operate', the US military continues to rape locals, along with spreading the Covid-19 in Northern Territory.
South Korea, Japan, Malaysia, Phillipines know the story.
Of course, none will be tried, and there will be no justice, since corrupt politicians put money before law (South Korea, Japan, Malaysia, Phillipines know the story).
Australia puts US persons ahead of Australia citizens once again.
Australian PM 'sorry' for vaccine rollout, escapes jailtime
The absurdity of corrupt politics, politicans responsible for billions in damages, human deaths, and national health crisis, walk away without any consequences....it tooks weaks for a meak 'sorry'!
The vaccine rollout is a lesson in pure corruption, and a lesson in how grand corruption is democracies work, and is supercharged.
Democracies inevetably end up with supercharged disinformation media bubbles due to the need to convince the population to vote for them. They also end up with the worst leadership, since the best con-men and sales-people are the best at the political corruption and games.
Grand Corruption is standard, and encoded into law. All government departments from the top down engage in monopolies and monopoly contract awarding, the primary way politians earn money, advertising, and elections. This also secures their post political careers, with most ending up on boards of companies they made rich while in office.
Back to the vaccine rollout...the government, against all medical advice, put all their eggs in one basket...Astra Zeneca, because politicians could get their kickbacks from monopoly contracts and pricing. The PM rejected Pfizer/Biontech due to cost, even though it is one of the richest countries in the world. The PM politically chose to reject options from around the world due to geopolitics, rejected Chinese vaccines and Russian vaccines due to politics and racsism. So much for free market, the government dictates what vaccine you get and when you get it?!
In a 'non-corrupt' Australia run by experts, federal and states could have placed advanced orders and procured Sinovac, CaronaVac, Sputnik-V, Astra Zeneca, Moderna and Biontech (directly from Germany, not from reseller Pfizer).
The whole population could have been fully vaccined by now with a less effective vaccine without supply constraints, such as Sinovac, Caronavac or Sputnik-V, because they are highly effective against hospitalization and death, and then boosted with Pfizer or Moderna which have supply contraints. The economy could have been fully open. Australia could have stopped Astra-Zenaca which killed people unneccessarily.
When Astra-Zenaca starting killing people with bloodclots (TTS), the government, instead of ditching it, doubled down on selling it to the people due to their corrupt kickbacks in place. So now you have Australians, who know the government is corrupt, rejecting taking vaccines, rightly so, with many getting serious issues , ICU, or death. The government faked the news that the blood clots are so rare it is like 'winning a lottery', rather than provide honest number and an assessment. Just in Australia, there were 48 cases of Death or ICU in 2 million shots...a lottery...where one in 42,000 will go to ICU or Die! And one in every 200 people will have adverse side affects. Medics recommended only giving people over 60 years Astra Zeneca...but the government was stuck, it was their only rollout strategy, so the government rejected that, and told everyone to go get it! Other countries rejected Astra Zeneca, especially EU, and the US insidiously 'offered to denote' their collection of Astra Zeneca after rejecting it...(then was called out on it because it is not safe)! Australia is still right now still pushing for all people to take it, knowing a bunch of people will die, just because it is a monopoly with kickbacks!
