Friday, October 06, 2006

Drug Wholesalers Scam American Workers

It is difficult for the American working class to realize the multiple different ways that Big Pharma and related businesses are stealing the profits of American labor and placing it in their pockets.  In the Wild West at least you could tell when a bank robbery was taking place.  Numbed and befuddled consumers pay for the billions of dollars in drug ads they watch on nightly news, lavish perks for doctors, “free” samples of drugs, outlandish mark-up on drug production costs, and massive lobbying on Capital Hill.  My advice, make all of these activities illegal and stop the great bank robbery of the twenty-first century.

An excellent expose article by Barbara Martinez, published in the Wall Street Journal on October 6, 2006, explains another angle on the bank robbery.  Large drug wholesalers like Wallgreens and San Francisco-based McKessan Corporation have been in cahoots with a price-fixing scandal orchestrated by a division of Hearst Corporation called First DataBank.  First DataBank publishes wholesale price lists for drugs.  In 2002 they began raising prices for no reason, enabling the middle-man organizations and large pharmacy groups to reap an estimated 7 billion heist from American workers and taxpayers.  Needless to say, small family pharmacies were run out of business and saw none of these profits.  Instead, profits in the large scam artist associations doubled and tripled.