comment: >
  
  Why do Republicans hate the poor and elderly?
context: I know a guy from college who went into pharma research. He's not a bad person. He genuinely loves developing new solutions for patients. We had a telling exchange one time. I'd just listened to a radio story about a big company re-patenting a topical drug by updating its included applicator. Absolutely no change to the drug itself or its MOA. But thanks to that change it somehow kept the drug expensive. How, I asked, could the company justify it? Was there something I wasn't understanding? Was it super expensive to manufacture, was the new applicator revolutionary? Gimme the inside dope, what merits these continued high prices in his industry?
  He paused, sighed, and said "don't hate, man."
  There was no defense beyond "they want to and they can." Production costs were dirt cheap. The new applicator was just different enough to be considered an update. The company simply made one tiny change in order to keep a cheap drug pricy.
  This was acne medication. I didn't press the point because like I said, he's not a bad person, he just wants to do research and develop drugs, I'm not trying to hold him accountable for C-suite decisions, he's not working at Raytheon or something. But what if I was asking about insulin?
  "Don't hate." How can people not hate at a certain point? >
  
  That anyone even attempts to portray this is controversial is a testament to how broken the Republicans party is
  When we negotiate collectively, we get far better results than when we don’t (you can include union-won benefits like the 40 hour work week in this category too) >
  
  Greedy bastards know no bounds.
  
  In November, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and several other Republican senators introduced legislation that would repeal the new prescription drug pricing reforms, which Congress approved earlier this year as part of the Inflation Reduction Act—a measure that Republicans unanimously opposed.
  "Though chances of this repeal effort succeeding are vanishingly slim with Democrats holding the Senate and White House, conservative lawmakers and their outside allies want to impede the law's progress before its expansion becomes inevitable," Politicoreported Thursday.
  Big Pharma lobbied aggressively against the Medicare drug pricing provisions, hysterically claiming the modest and extremely popular changes could send the U.S. "back into the dark ages of biomedical research."
  
  .....
  
  Politico noted Thursday that the deep-pocketed drug industry—which boasts nearly three registered lobbyists for every member of Congress—is "gearing up to fight the law's implementation, using whatever legal and regulatory tools are available."
  Sarah Ryan, a spokesperson for Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), told the outlet that the industry will "keep working to mitigate the law's harm and continue to push for real solutions that will bring financial relief for patients."'
  NPRreported in September that pharma lobbyists are likely to take aim at "seemingly technical details" that "could have major implications" for the law, which advocates and Democratic lawmakers hope to build on in the coming years.
  
  Article continues... >
  
  Fuck these clowns and all that put profit over people. Big Pharma is a scam and shouldn't exist.