Here Are "The Most Profitable Corporations You've Never Heard Of"

This is the very reason that the " Best of the best " in Federal Enforcement in this area thru up their hands in disgust and walked away a couple of decades ago.
This has been taking place for more than Thirty years completely unabated.
Read the entire article as well as the links and form your own opinion.

www.zerohedge.com...

Buck

a reply to: flatbush71

When I first started becoming aware of how sleazy, parasitic and corrupt the U.S. economy was, I only had expertise in one industry, financial services. Coming to grips with the blatant criminality of the TBTF Wall Street banks and their enablers at the Federal Reserve and throughout the federal government, I thought this was the main issue that needed to be confronted. What I’ve learned in the years since is pretty much every industry in America is corrupt to the core, more focused on sucking money away from helpless citizens via rent-seeking schemes versus actually producing a product and adding value. Unfortunately, the healthcare industry is no exception.

I felt I should add a taster as you've not really explained the article's content. Seems interesting so far.

a reply to: Wide-Eyes

Its everywhere you look.
I just posted in another thread about how investigations were killed every single time.
No matter what industry.
As soon as people started uncovering stuff..............


Buck

a reply to: flatbush71

And people wonder why I want all involvement of private enterprise excised from the healthcare industry, globally, not just in my back yard.

a reply to: flatbush71

Pharmacy Benefit Managers

Yeah, just heard about this BS a few weeks ago due to a Georgia Pharmacist being a whistle-blower on this whole scam. It's outrageous. Later I talked to a friend in another state who said her pharmacy will allow her to pay cash to avoid the PBM pricing, she then files a claim with her insurer for reimbursement. Her script now costs one third of the amount it used to...

I feel that this is something that the american public should be aware of and worried about, not the russian hackers or the endless circus of dems versus reps, because this is relevant and dreadful for each and every person.

I mean, who needs enemies when you have such a wonderful and friendly healthcare? The russians are probably loling their head off.

originally posted by: TrueBrit
a reply to: flatbush71

And people wonder why I want all involvement of private enterprise excised from the healthcare industry, globally, not just in my back yard.

Because the American healthcare model is zero compatible with the UK/most European ones?

a reply to: flatbush71

Even some Republicans criticize PBMs for pursuing profit at the public’s expense. “They show no interest in playing fair, no interest in the end user,” says Representative Doug Collins of Georgia...

Of course they don't have any "interest in the end user," because BY LAW their fiduciary duty is to their shareholders and that means their one and only goal is to make as much profit as possible for the shareholders.

“They act as monopolistic terrorists on this market.”

Because that's exactly what our congress critters made them!!!

Collins and a bipartisan group in Congress want to rein in the PBM industry, setting up a titanic battle between competing corporate interests.

Is it any wonder I am even more afraid of the possible "solutions" that will be proffered???

Awesome thread, OP -- S&F

a reply to: flatbush71

Yes, and the regulatory state works hand in hand with it to enable it. The very large exist because the rules enable them. Only the very large can survive half the rules as they are written by regulatory.

It is a self-fulfilling and self-sustaining issue, but to blame the "free" market is wrong. Rules are a lack of freedom in the system.

What it is is a crony state or crony market where government works hand in hand with its chosen power players (cronies). There isn't any freedom in that system although there may be a market of sorts.

a reply to: ketsuko

We absolutely exist in a state of Corporate Welfare. The biggest example of this is the current crisis of H1B workers artificially suppressing middle class wages. It was okay when it was Mexicans suppressing blur-collar wages though. /sarcasm. What next I wonder? Oh, wait..Robots.

As the OP article mentions PBMs,

Over the past 30 years, PBMs have evolved from paper-pushers to significant controllers of the drug pricing system, a black box understood by almost no one. Lack of transparency, unjustifiable fees, and massive market consolidations have made PBMs among the most profitable corporations you’ve never heard about.

A law suit claims the Purdue Pharma is selling to suspicious pharmacies flooding the black market.

Everett's lawsuit, now in federal court in Seattle, accuses Purdue Pharma of gross negligence and nuisance. The city seeks to hold the company accountable, the lawsuit alleges, for "supplying OxyContin to obviously suspicious pharmacies and physicians and enabling the illegal diversion of OxyContin into the black market" and into Everett, despite a company program to track suspicious flows.

"Our community has been significantly damaged, and we need to be made whole," said Stephanson, who grew up in Everett and is its longest-serving mayor, holding the job since 2003.

Source

a reply to: uncommitted

Indeed. And yet, every day that passes is a day corporate entities circle ever closer to the heart and soul of our NHS here in the UK. That must be resisted, with everything up to and including force.

Other countries being incapable of utilising wholesome, socially responsible programs for their own benefit, well... that is their look out, but its unwise all the same.