Big Pharma Gouging Gets Even More Infuriating With New Site "Correction."

Mallinkrodt CEO Mark Trudeau. Getting rich off by endangering
infants by price gouging anti-seizure meds. Nice. 

Gizmodo, a news, technology and science website, recently ran an incredibly infuriating article about a company called Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals.

This outfit bought another pharmaceutical company called Questcor in 2014.

Anyway, Gizmodo reported that Questcor and Mallinkrodt increased the price for a drug called Acthar from "just $40 in 2000 to over $40,000 today, despite the fact that Acthar has been o the market since 1952."

Acthar is a medication that helps prevent seizures, especially in infants, so it's kind of an important drug.  Mallinckrodt rakes in about $1 billion annually from the now overpriced Acthar, said Gizmodo, citing a CNN report.

When I read that, I thought that can't be true. That's just a ridiculous price increase that nobody would dare try.

It turned out the article wasn't entirely true. Mallinckrodt sent Gizmodo an email, demanding a retraction to an error in the story. Gizmodo obliged. Here's the mea culpa that Gizmodo ran:

"Correction: This article originally stated that the price of Acthar had gone 'from just $40 in 2000 to over $40,000 today.' A spokesperson for Mallinckrodt emailed to request a correction that Acthar actually costs $38,892 today. Gizmodo regrets the error. We also regret that every last one of these guys isn't in prison yet."

Yep, Mallinckrodt was upset, not that they increased the price of a necessary drug by nearly 100,000 percent within two decades. It's that Gizmodo ever so slightly exaggerated the cost of the drug.

As if bilking people to to the tune of $40,000 is beyond the pale but doing the same for a mere $38,892 is not.  No wonder the Gizmodo correction was so snarky.

Drug companies executives do deserve to rot in jail. The Gizmodo article accurately pointed out this:

"Curiously, there's a drug called Synacthen that's identical to Acthar and sells for just $33 in Canada. So why isn't Synacthen available in the U.S.? Because Mallinckrodt bought the U.S.rights to Synacthen and simply doesn't make it available to American consumers."

Because Mallinckrodt figures infants who are injured or die from seizures because medicines are too expensive are definitely worth the profits.

The Gizmodo article explained the Mallinckridt expects to pay a $15.4 million settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice because of allegations that Quester bribed doctors and their staff to prescribe the super expensive medication.

Yeah, to you and me, $15.4 million seems like a lot of money to you and me. But remember, Mallinckrodt makes $1 billion a year from Acthar alone. It's comparable to the "pain" I would experience if I got a $5 parking ticket.

If this whole thing was just one isolated incident to piss you off, that would be one thing. But the news has been filled with news of Big Pharma boosting prices to sky high levels for fun and especially profit.

It doesn't matter that these new sky high prices are literally killing people. You've heard the stories. Insulin prices have soared, for example. Type 1 diabetics were paying an average of $5,705 in 2016, almost twice as much as just four years earlier. Insulin prices have spiraled in the three years since.

According to USA Today, the Senate Finance Committe told insulin makers to detail their price increases. One vial of Eli Lilly's Humalog went from $35 in 2001 to $234 in 2015. Between 2013 and this year, Nordisk's insulin went from $289 to $540.

The price got so high that diabetics started to ration their insulin. That killed many of them.  These deaths are worth if for the millions these pharma executives are raking in, apparently.  I guess they found a way to literally get away with murder.

The Pharma industry has guaranteed their profits through blocking competition, herculean efforts to confuse patients so they don't understand how much drugs really cost, notes a U.S. News and World Report.

All in the name of profits. We've gotten so dystopian that we just accept this as normal, when people should be marching in front of these evil Big Pharma companies with pitchforks and torches.

I hope there's a special place in hell for these pharma and insurance executives who think it's OK to literally kill people so they can suck up even more millions of dollars.

Latest Outrage: Pentagon Clawing Back Enlistment Bonuses To California Guardsmen

Robert D'Andrea, a retired Army Major, has been toldhe has to
repay $20,000 in enlistment bonuses because
recruiters improperly  issued the bonuses. So he's being
punished for somebody else's misdeed. Photo by Al Seib/LA Times. 

UPDATE:

A couple days ago, U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter suspended the clawbacks of bonuses given to Californial National Guard members.

It's possible the clawbacks might be reinstated at some point, at least for some people, though that's in doubt.

And what do you do with the people who already repaid the bonuses, which were given improperly, though the people that received them had no idea they were given the money wrongly.

Congress might step in and wipe the slate clean for everybody involved. But you can't trust Congress with anything these days.

It was nice of Ash Carter to suspend the clawbacks, but why did he, along with everybody else, wait to take action until bad publicity, courtesy of the LA Times, caused the uproar?

THAT, I'd like to hear.

PREVIOUS DISCUSSION

I guess when you don't need extra soldiers to fight your wars, you throw them under the bus.

That seems to be the case with nearly 10,000 California National Guardsmen, who were enticed to serve with bonuses of up to $15,000 to fight in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Los Angeles Times, which broke the story Saturday,  tells us.

Says the LA Times:

"Nearly 10,000 soldiers, many of whom served multiple combat tours, have been ordered to repay large enlistment bonuses - and slapped with interest charges, wage garnishments and tax liens if they refuse - after audits revealed widespread overpayments by the California Guard at the height of the wars last decade."

In other words, the California Guard brass improperly offered the bonuses, but its the soldiers who took the bonuses that are being punished, even though they had no idea the bonuses were improper.

The soldiers, understandably, are angry the Pentagon is reneging on ten year old agreements and imposing terrible financial hardships on veterans.

As one of many examples, The LA Times cited Robert Richmond, 48, who received a bonus, and then received permanent back and brain injuries in a road side bomb blast in Iraq. The Pentagon is trying to claw back more than $19,000 in bonuses, penalties and interest from Richmond.

He's too far in debt to qualify for a home loan, and doesn't know how to pay back the money.

"I signed a contract tht I literally risked my life to fulfill.....We want the somebody in the government, anybody, to say this is wrong and we'll stop going after this money," Richmond told the LA Times.

 So far, it does not appear the crooked leadership of the California Guard is getting in all that much trouble.

After a federal investigation regarding the bonuses started, Army Master Sgt. Toni Jaffe, California Guard's incentive manager, pleaded guilty to filing $15.2 million in false claims and was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison, the Los Angeles Times said.

OK, fine, but, again, why are they punishing the soldiers who took the bonuses in good faith?

As always, it seems, the mucky-mucks don't get screwed for their misdeeds. Instead, their victims get victimized again.

Aren't you proud to be an American?

Now that the Los Angeles Times has thrown a harsh light on this scandal, politicians are finally falling all over each other to fix this mess.

The Pentagon says they were required to seek the reimbursements from the soldiers because it was a matter of law, something that only Congress can do.

God save us.

Anyway, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said there would be a House investigation on this issue, and called the situation disgraceful.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle now say they want to change the law to void the repayments.

Where were they, though, before the shit hit the fan and the publicity struck? After all, I'm sure some of these soldiers and veterans who were being harassed to repay the money contacted their local Congress Creatures, asking for help.

Couldn't legislation have been introduced before so much of this heartache happened? The Los Angeles Times said Congress has known about this situation for two years and did nothing. Why?

I hope this isn't another  case where we make soldiers risk their lives and throw them away. Can't we do better than this?

Landlord Trying To Evict 97 Year Old Woman Because Money

Marie Hatch, 97, who has lived in the same San Francisco
Bay Area house for five decades faces possible eviction
because her landlord wants to sell the house and
make more than $1 million. Landlord claims he's
bound by estate rules. 

A 97 year old woman in the San Francisco Bay area is about to be kicked out of the house she's lived in for 66 years because the landlord wants to sell the house for a cool $1 million or so.

Marie Hatch's friend and landlord, Vivian Kruse, told her decades ago Hatch could live in the cottage until she died.  

Now Kruse is long dead, so is her daughter, and granddaughter, who reported all made a verbal agreement to let Hatch stay at the house until she died.

When the granddaughter died, the final woman in the chain, the verbal agreement to let Hatch stay ended, says her current landlord, David Kantz. He had been married to the granddaughter, Pamela Kantz, until their divorce. Then Pamela Kantz's boyfriend murdered her.

Now, the house where Hatch lives is worth $1.2 million at least, thanks to the skyrocketing rents and property values around the Bay Area that has made the region unaffordable except for the very rich, according to the article that brought this to our attention in the San Francisco Chronicle. 

Hatch, who is retired from a bakery and also has cancer, is not rich. So out she goes. The landlord, David Kantz has to take advantage of the high property values after all. You can't let an old lady get in the way of that!

Though maybe Hatch won't go so fast, despite David Kantz's wishes.

Kantz says his hands are tied and has to sell the house and evict Hatch. He said a trust left behind by his wife expires in July, so he is duty-bound to sell the property on behalf of his two sons, reports the San Francisco Chronicle. 

Says the Chronicle:

"'We have come to this unexpected confluence of events, and I am responsible to do the best I can for the beneficiaries,  - my sons,' said Kantz.......'I just kind of inherited this property and the assumptions that weren't really written down, and now I have to unwind it.'

He said that family lore does indeed contend that his wife's grandmother, Vivian Kruse, told Hatch she could stay for life, 'but there's no contract. There's nothing in my wife's will that directs me to do anything other than what is best for the beneficiaries.'"

"I feel bad for the elderly lady, I feel bad for my sons, I feel bad for me" Kantz said.

Yeah, but you'd think he could find a way to benefit without kicking Hatch onto the street. The whole things still smells like a cruel money grab to me.

After news of this situation broke, people did step in to help, as they always do.

According to an update article in the San Francisco Chronicle:

"Some people offered to pay Hatch's rent at a higher rate, some volunteered legal help, and a few even said they would buy the house from her landlord so she could stay  - a remedy the landlord's attorney said he is exploriing. 

Friends of Hatch started a GoFundMe account and by Monday evening it had raised more than $13,000."

The Chronicle also reported a high powered attorney, Joe Cotchett, stepped in to advocate for Hatch and says the verbal contract that kept her in the home is legally binding. The plan to kick her out is unlawful eviction, he said.

So it's beginning to look like the solution to the more outrageous excesses against people - bad press against the perpetrator - is working in this case, too, and Hatch will probably end up staying where she is.

However, renters in general are kinda screwed in the San Francisco Bay area, and elsewhere. True, most landlords are not ogres, and it's mostly not the fault of landlords that rents have gone sky high. There's lots of economics at play.

But a few landlords are awful, and even for the vast majority whose landlords are nice people, they still can't afford housing.

Only 12 of 482 municipalities in California have rent control, the Chronicle says.

Another big part of the problem is supply and demand. A lot of people want or need to live in the Bay Area, and in other hot spots in the nation. But there's not a lot of places to build more housing, and people understandably want to keep some open spaces and not fill every last grassy or forested patch with apartment buildings.

San Francisco and other municipalities are toying with increasing allowable housing density so that more apartments are built.

But this will take time. And so we might see the spectacle of other elderly people kicked out to the street, or threatened with it, because certain landlords prefer people who can pay outlandish rents.

Let's Literally Kill People With Surprise Ambulance Fees!

Warning: A trip to the hospital in an ambulance
might bankrupt you, because insurance and profits  

It's become the American Way: If you don't think you're making enough money, just sneak in a bunch of exorbitant fees that catch you by surprise.

The airline industry is a leader in that, with fees for every little service that used to be included in the air fare. Hotels do it.

Then, hospitals and doctors started doing it. Somebody who is not in the patient's insurance network  steps into the operating room or whatever just briefly. Then they would present a huge bill to the patient for the minimal amount of work they do.

Ambulance companies are doing it, too, in one of the worst stories I've heard about this type of practice

According to Consumerist, many people who get trips to the hospital in ambulances often get huge bills from these ambulance companies.

Apparently, you're suppose to know ahead of time which ambulance is covered by your insurance, and you are somehow supposed to know, when you're in the throes of a heart attack or something, which ambulance company to call, which employees need to be working on that ambulance and even the route that ambulance will take.

You call an ambulance in an emergency. By definition, during an emergency you can't spend hours researching who works at which ambulance service and which ambulance is covered by your insurance and which one isn't.

So you take your chances and call an ambulance. But maybe you won't.

This is the most Darwinian, evil of business practices. If you take it to its logical conclusion, people who don't have much money and are in an emergency will be afraid to call an ambulance and just die. People who have money will call the ambulance, and if they are presented with a big bill, they'll just groan, then pay it.

In nature, it's the survival of the fittest. In our current system, it's survival of the richest. If you're poor, whether it's your fault or not, you deserve to die. If you're rich, whether you've earned all that money or not, you deserve to live.

I get it. The cost of ambulances and paramedics and all that must be paid for by somebody. You'd think there would be some way to pool insurance plans across competitors or something that you pay only your deductible under your insurance plan no matter which ambulance takes you to the hospital.

That way, you pay your fair share through the deductable and your normal insurance premiums, and the ambulance companies get paid, like they need to.  But I guess it's more profitable to just find loopholes and force people to pay huge out of network fees.

I can't afford our current system, and neither can a lot of other people, but we're stuck. There's money to be made, profits to gather, and if a few people die and/or go bankrupt, oh well.

I guess if I ever need to go to a hospital, I'll need to take my chances and hope somebody gives me a ride, and gets me there in time.

Watch Another Company Move Jobs To Mexico; Turn Employees Into Sanders Supporters

Carrier/United Technologies hamhandedly
announces their firing 1,400 workers so they
can get cheaper labor in Mexico and then
wonders why everybody is mad. 

If the political "establishment" ever wonders why so many voters are gravitating toward the likes of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, they need only watch the video at the bottom of this post.

In it, Carrier Air Conditioning which is part of United Technologies, is announcing to employees that they're moving to Mexico for the cheap labor and screw you expensive American assholes.

Well, they didn't exactly say it like that, but you get my drift.

Yes, I know that Bernie Sanders and  Donald Trump are worlds apart politically.  Not very alike AT ALL.

But one of the extremely few things the two have in common is they're attracting a lot of people who are fed up with the "system."

It's the system in which that dreaded 1% we hear about calls the shots, mucks with peoples' lives and is totally aided and abetted by the established political system. Or so the thinking goes.

Donald Trump is among the so-called one percent, but his message of blaming our ills on everything but him, but especially the political establishment, Mexicans and Muslims, draws a lot of fans.

Bernie Sanders rails against the one percent so often that if I had a penny for every time he railed against that one percent, I'd BE part of that one percent.

It isn't as if United Technologies is desperate and the only way to save them from bankruptcy is moving to Mexico.

The company and its CEO are flush with cash. They just want more. If they make a bunch of people in Indiana unemployed, it's not their problem. They should just figure out a way to get rich on their own, is apparently the "logic"

Zach Carter writes in Huffington Post, in an article about the Carrier/United Technologies video of them telling employees of the Mexico move. The title of the article is, accurately, "Watch Corporate America Turn a Room Full of Workers Into Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump Supporters"

"The contractor does billions of dollars a ear in business with the federal government. CEO Gregory Hayes pulled down nearly $10 million in 2014 and over $20 million the year before. On Thursday, the company reported $7.6 billion in profits, up from $6.2 billion the year before and $5.7 billion the year before that."

And, sorry, it's not the just the wonderful work Hayes is doing to keep the company so profitable. It's also the workers who are making all those air conditioners that are doing it. The ones that are being thrown on the garbage heap here.

I'm sure it wasn't a big leap for the people in the video who were learning they'd soon lose their jobs that the political and economic system is stacked against them and they need to find better leaders to run this country.

This might not be totally fair to the Powers That Be. And there are a lot of complex reasons why a company bails out of the United States in search of cheaper labor elsewhere.

But the employees in the below video  understand that it's all a race to the bottom. A handful of powerful and rich people are amassing wealth, while making the rest of us worse and worse off.

Which is why they're looking for a new direction.

Wanna know why so many people (me included!) are so angry at the way American politics is run? The video at the bottom of the post is one, but Carter in Huffington Post sums it up:

"The answer is pretty simple. Both Republicans and Democrats have consistently backed economic policies over the past 35 years that have systematically gutted the American middle class. For decades, Congress has listened to corporate lobbyists who told our representatives that if they could just cut this one tax rate, or just ease this one regulation, there would be a renaissance of prosperity. The renaissance has happened for the rich. Everyone else has been left behind."

And there you have Trump and Sanders' appeal. Trump is largely self funding his campaign. Sanders is relying on milions of Americans making small donations to his campaign, and he has eschewed PACs and big corporate contributions.

The rest of the presidential campaigns have PACS run by the corporations and the elite. See why everyone's mad?

For what it's worth, Trump posted the following on Facebook:

"1,400 workers in Indianapolis are informerd their company is moving to Mexico. WE cannot allw this to keep happening! It WILL NOT happen under my watch! We need to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!"

This is a ready made campaign issue for Sanders, and I expect him to comment on this, very forcefully, any minute now.

I don't have a a decent prescription on how to fix this. Expecially since I'm surely oversimplifying everything.

Still, videos like the one below make me angry, and makes me understand why the rest of the country is so angry.

What I don't understand is why corporate America, and the politicians they pay off, are so bewildered by the fact that everyone is so pissed off.

But then, cluelessness is their forte.

I love/hate how the guy announcing the layoffs explains things. As if the 1,400 he's discarding should just be happy the company is "rescuing" its financial well being.

From theblaze.com, we start with the company rep making the announcement:

"'The best way to stay competitive and protect the business longterm is to move production from our facility in Indianapolis to Monterrey, Mexico,' te representative says as the employees begin booing and shouting. 

The representative goes on to share details that the company doesn't intend to fully close the facility's doors until mid-2017, and encourages employees to 'remain committed to manufacturing the same quality products' until then."

Yeah, like the employees are going to do that to a corporate who thinks their garbage. Pro tip: I wouldn't buy any Carrier air conditioning products going forward.

Theblaze.com then continues with the reaction from the workers:

"'Yeah, fuck you!' one person shouts back.

Later, another one says, 'How long will it take before people start tearing shit up?'

The representative then tells employees how 'extremely difficult' a decision this was to make.

'It was made most difficult because I understand it will have an impact on all of you, your families, and the community,' he said."

Oh, please, this decision was NOT difficult for United Technologies. Anything to maximize profits, right?

Here's the video:

Pharma Bro Martin Shkreli, Who Everybody Hates, Making People Hate Him More

"Pharma Bro" Martin Shkreli (left) and Bernie
Sanders really DO NOT get along these days.  

I don't know if there's anyone out there better at being a villian than Martin Shkreli.

He's the "Pharma Bro," the hot shot young dude with the hedge funds and drug price gouging habit.

Pharma Bro Shkreli jacked up the price of a medication called daraprim, the only available drug for a certain parasitic disease by 4,000 percent, making the drug unaffordable to many and literally putting the lives of some people in danger.

You know, for fun and especially profit.

After a big public outcry, Pharma Bro pledged to drop the price of the drug back down. I guess he was hoping the media outcry would die out and people wouldn't notice the price is still high. Of course they are noticing.

I don't think he intends to bring the price down. You know, fun and profit.

Speaking of which, Shkreli made news this week by sending a campaign donation of $2,700 to presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, reports the Boston Globe.

Which is odd, since I don't think Sanders, who yells about corporate greed every single chance he gets, would be too buddy-buddy with Pharma Bro.

It turns out, Sanders indeed isn't a big fan of Pharma Bro. The Sanders campaign took that $2,700 and donated it to Washington's Whitman-Walker health clinic, the Boston Globe said.

"We are not keeping the money from this poster boy for drug company greed," sniffed Sanders campaign spokesman Michael Briggs.

By the way, the medication Shkreli jacked the price up on so much helps HIV patients, among others. The health clinic Sanders donated the money to hel;s HIV patients, among others, so the exchange of money seems like a pretty good fit.

This turn of events,  however,  has really made Pharma Bro pout big time.

Apparently, Shkreli wanted to use the Sanders donation to entice him to meet with him, and Sanders is not interested. Pharma Bro wanted to ask Sanders about innovation and health care, and shouldn't we jack up pharmaceutical costs to bring about innovation.

But no dice. "He'll take my money, but he won't engage with me for five minutes to understand the issue better," Pharma Bro whined.

In other words, Pharma Bro tried to buy a meeting with Sanders for the low, low price of $2,700. Then he whined when Sanders wouldn't jump for him at the scent of $2,700, which in the grand scheme of Washington DC lobbying isn't a whole lot of money.

Pharma Bro is really pouting on his Twitter page, Tweeting, "Are campaigns allowed to give to charities? Don't they have to spend their money on campaign-related activities? #InvestigateBernie"

I'm sure Bernie's lawyes have already sorted this out, Martin. So chill.

By the way, Pharma Bro, the pictures of cats rolling around in money on your Twitter feed are a nice touch.

Technically, Sanders IS interested in learning more about what Pharma Bro calls innovation, and what Sanders calls pharmaceutical price gouging.

Sanders is the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions and sent Shkreli a letter saying the drug price increase was under investigation and please send me certain documents and information pronto!

So far, Pharma Bro hasn't sent Sanders' committee that stuff, even though the deadline to do it was October 9.

Maybe you could send Bernie all your info on drug company pricing and innovation and such, Pharma Bro? Don't know if you'll change Bernie's mind, but at least you could say you tried.

But you'd rather be Pharma Dude, and be this entitled little twit, huh? It's good for business. And making money.

And you're going to stamp your feet and cry when you don't get your way.  Bernie Sanders rejeted you! Bernie is such a meanie! Waaahh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Agreeing With Forbes: Dumb Bank President Digs In Heels, Won't Pay Woman For Botched Foreclosure

Forbes just put out a follow-up to the reports I wrote about last month about how a bank in Ohio had a company remove items from a house they were foreclosing on.

Update: Katie Barnett is now suing the First
National Bank of Wellston in Ohio after
bank leaders continue to be stupid.  

The only problem was, they got the wrong house, it wasn't under foreclosure, a woman legitimately owned it, they broke in, took the woman's possessions and threw them out.

Not good.

Despite the negative publicity the bank is facing, the bank president has dug in his heels and won't pay the $18,000 the woman asked for in compensation.

As Forbes points out, it would have been a no brainer for the bank to pay out the $18,000, the whole thing would have gone away and they would have gotten out of this mess cheaply and cleanly.

Stubbornness is never a good thing. Now the bank is facing a lawsuit from the woman, which will surely cost the bank more than the $18,000 it could have paid out. And I'm sure would-be customers of the First National Bank of Wellston are a little leery of putting their money in the bank, given how they behave there.

Forbes writer Rick Ungar ties the stupidity of this bank with the stupidity of bank presidents throughout the world who precipitated the financial mess that began in 2008, one which we're still suffering from.

He writes:

"....if history has taught us anything it is that tone deaf business operators, seemingly without a shred of good judgement, are only cut out for one kind of work--running banks. How else do you explain how bank presidents throughout the world nearly succeeded in completely destroying the world's economy through their stunningly bad judgement and greed?

Yeah, this definitely reinforces my instinct to  to hide what little money I have under the mattress and be done with banks. They scary, those banks.

Anyway, best of luck to the woman suing the First National Bank of Wellston. Maybe she'll end up owning it.