And so, another working week will soon draw to a close. Not a moment too soon, yes? This is, you may recall, our treasured signal to daydream about weekend plans. Our agenda is very modest. We hope to catch up on our naps and our reading, and spend time with our shortest person. And what about you? The vacation season may have ended, but summer is still here, so perhaps this is a chance to enjoy the great outdoors once more. Conversely, you could shop for winter clothes. Or try to make sense of the latest presidential polls. Whatever you do, have a grand time, but be safe. Enjoy and see you soon …
Ian Read, the Pfizer chief executive, says that the Hillary Clinton proposals to contain the price of pharmaceuticals would be “very negative” for the industry and are a step toward single-payer health care, Bloomberg News tells us. “The Clinton approach to health care drives you to a one-payer system, and drives you to rationing, drives you to a place where most consumers don’t want to be,” he says. “In its totality it would be very negative for innovation.”
The FDA’s Office of Criminal Investigations has spent thousands of hours pursuing foreign-imported, mislabeled drugs. But more than half of all OCI cases end without charges, and critics contend agency efforts protect drug makers as much as consumers, Reuters reports. From fiscal 2008 to 2015, more than half of OCI cases — 53 percent — were closed without action.
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Dear Ian: We appreciate the multimillion donations Pfizer has made to The Clinton Foundation. However as we say in Arkansas money talks, BS walks. Therefore if you wish to receive consideration on this drug pricing business you can mail your check to TCF at the following address.
Kind regards,
Hillary
The Clinton Foundation
1271 6th Avenue, NY, NY 10020
Why pharmavet1, may I observe that such cynicism ill becomes you.
If memory serves, in 2008, it was candidate Obama who advocated ‘single payer’ vs then Senator Clintons’ position. Now that the President has shifted to a more insurance based model that emulated her, candidate Clinton is depicted as a proponent of ‘single payer.’ That’s a shift I hadn’t noticed – mayhaps Mr Read sees beyond my horizon.
Why Observer, you shouldn’t ask Hillary to recall anything that happened in 2008, or rather “having no specific memory” is the proper way to say it. Influence peddling is the oldest game around. Why else would Pfizer donate $5,000,000 to the Clinton Foundation? To feed starving children in Bangladesh. It can’t be to use TCF to funnel money to worthy causes and novel therapies for tstsugamushi fever. Pfizer has their own foundations for that stuff.