Remember Pharma Bro Martin Shkreli? He’s the young pharmaceutical entrepreneur who was probably the most hated person in America about a year ago after he raised the price on a drug needed by AIDS patients and others from less than twenty dollars a pill to seven hundred and fifty dollars. That Martin Shkreli visited Fox News Friday night and tried to paint himself as a humanitarian just trying to make money for the good of humanity.
In case you have forgotten why Shkreli is so hated, here’s a refresher, via a New Yorker article from February, 2016:
Shkreli achieved notoriety when his company, Turing Pharmaceuticals, bought a drug called Daraprim, which is used to treat toxoplasmosis, a disease that can be fatal to H.I.V. patients. After buying the drug, Turing raised its price from less than twenty dollars per tablet to seven hundred and fifty dollars. This was too high, in the judgment of many people who knew the industry, and many more who did not. Experts called the increase “unjustifiable,” while those discussing the situation online used less measured language. Shkreli at first said he would lower the price, which scarcely mollified his critics. (One headline: “Martin Shkreli Lowers Drug Price, Is Still an Asshole.”) Then he said he wouldn’t, which increased the outrage—people were calling him “pharma bro,” the personification of a medical industry gone bad.
[…] Then, in December, he was indicted on seven counts of fraud, related to a hedge fund he had co-founded, and he resigned as C.E.O. of Turing. But, by then, his villainy had taken a turn for the whimsical: it was revealed that he had paid two million dollars for an unheard, one-of-a-kind album by the Wu-Tang Clan, and then embarked upon a feud with the Clan’s greatest rapper, Ghostface Killah. It was clear that he wanted attention, even though it wasn’t always clear what he wanted to do with it.
Host Tucker Carlson began by saying Shkreli “has been busy making a name for himself and speaking a lot on Twitter.”
Carlson noted that a lot of Shkreli’s tweets could not be read on the air. But Carlson did manage to quote from one to Hillary Clinton that read, in part, “I’ve always hated you, you stupid blank,” and one to Bernie Sanders: “You’re a loser… Take your communism to a country that wants it.”
An excerpt from that last tweet made it to a lower-third banner.
Not surprisingly, Shkreli is a Donald Trump fan and got plenty of air time to talk about Trump’s honesty and authenticity vs. Clinton’s lack of same. But I guess to a guy like Shkreli, Trump would seem honest.
Even Carlson said Shkreli’s jacking up the price of a drug he didn’t create was “kind of a parasite move.” In fact, the look on Carlson’s face was priceless as Shkreli insisted that patients have thanked him for jacking up the prices of drugs they depend on because they’d rather pay more than not have the drug available.
“If you raise it 5,000 percent, it seems a bit like a hostage situation,” Carlson said.
SHKRELI: It’s still barely profitable … I don’t listen to the media, I don’t listen to politicians, I listen to rationality and logic and I’m gonna price this drug where it belongs, not where somebody tells me to, not where it’s gonna look bad or make me look good and I’m gonna serve these patients.
… I don’t want to make too much money … [Turing’s] profit margins are very thin. … I’ve got 100 people [there] barely making ends meet. We’re trying to make new drugs for rare diseases. We need the money. … I think it’s OK for us to make a small profit.
Watch it below, from the December 9, 2016 Tucker Carlson Tonight and get out your tiny violins.
There’s an added bit of entertainment coming over the next month before the GOP dismantles the ACA on January 20th and Trump happily signs the bill. There’s been some discussion lately about “Repeal and Delay” since the Right has never been able to agree on a plan, mostly due to the fact that many of them never wanted any such program in the first place. The GOP will be hammered on this from the Far Right, including both Fox News and their favorite radio spokesman, Rush Limbaugh. And here’s what Limbaugh had to say on this matter, (something he’s threatening to really jump up and down about over the next few weeks – specifically to influence the GOP and Trump/Pence to do his bidding): “I’m thinking this whole idea of having something to replace it with is a smoke screen and this two-year, three-year delay…Just repeal it and turn loose the market on this! I don’t… For me, I don’t understand what this two- or three-year delay is….And there’s no real guidance from Trump on this yet, other than we’re gonna repeal it and replace it. But when do you replace it is the question – and with what? They do not have an alternative Obamacare health care bill. Now, my thinking is ‘Good! Why should the government be involved in this anyway?’” I think it’s safe to say that the Far Right will have their way on this, particularly with Mike Pence running the White House and Pence’s friend Tom Price running Health and Human Services. I have repeatedly said this since Trump squeaked through during the election and we are now seeing the Right Wing really starting to sharpen their knives. I don’t know that the Right is so concerned about millions of people losing their coverage when they can spin it that most of them could have qualified for other plans anyway. (Don’t worry that those plans would have bankrupted them)
By the way, at the same time they’re pulling these moves, they are already starting to move on the notion of gutting Medicare. And there is even a Right Wing House member who’s making hay with his new Social Security reform plan – the one that refuses to make even the tiny adjustment to SSI taxes to solve the math equation they have in about 20 years. The one that supposedly makes the program solvent for the next 75 years by strictly cutting benefits to most of the recipients – anywhere up to a third or half of their benefits. Sounds great, doesn’t it? And Trump will have perfect cover for this because he can say “Hey, we have to keep these programs solvent and we don’t want to increase all your taxes, you know.”
I really find it interesting that in the midst of the holiday season when we focus on giving and on compassion for others, the Far Right is focused on gloating, bullying and then potentially brutalizing large swathes of the American public. I suppose that can make for a Merry Christmas for some, but not anyone I would care to know so well.
:D