Global Pharma Attacks Public Opinion - K.C. Adams -
Canadians' access to affordable pharmaceuticals is an
important aspect of affirming the right to health care. Working people
do not agree that their well-being can be held hostage to the
profiteering of global pharmaceutical cartels. Canada requires its own
public self-reliant pharmaceutical industry to provide Canadians with
the medications they require at minimal cost.  The need for
public control over a self-reliant pharmaceutical industry in Canada is
a longstanding concern that is again being brought to the fore by the
COVID-19 pandemic and the requirement for tests, vaccines to prevent
infection by the coronavirus, as well as other drugs to mitigate the
infection and decrease long-term effects and mortality.
Under
these circumstances, the Trudeau Liberal government is seemingly
"placing bets" on various private pharmaceutical firms to come through
with a working vaccine. An October 23 report from the Canadian Press
states: "Trudeau said his government signed a $173
million contract with Quebec's Medicago to secure the rights to buy 76
million doses of its vaccine, should it meet health and safety
standards. The funding will also be used to establish a production
facility in Quebec City, he said. "Ottawa is also
investing $18.2 million in a potential vaccine from British Columbia's
Precision NanoSystems. Meanwhile, the National Research Council is
spending $23 million to support other Canadian vaccine initiatives,
Trudeau said. "The prime minister said Canada has
signed six agreements with a number of companies taking part in the
global race to produce a safe and effective vaccine for COVID-19.
"Two more American vaccine makers, Moderna and Pfizer, have
asked Health Canada to review their products, which are undergoing
clinical trials. "It's reasonable to expect that
vaccines will start to roll out at some point in 2021, said Trudeau,
but even then, supply will be limited, and high-risk populations will
be prioritized for inoculation. [...] "The prime
minister also said Canada has acquired 'hundreds of thousands' of rapid
test kits from medical company Abbott." The report
does not say what happens to any funds used to "secure the rights" to
vaccines should they turn out not to be viable. Are these yet more
pay-the-rich schemes being made under the high ideal of protecting
Canadians against the COVID-19 pandemic? The Need
for Self-Reliance and Public Enterprise to
Guarantee the
Right of All to Health Care It is amidst this
situation that the global pharmaceutical cartels are strengthening
their fight against a public opinion that demands a new pro-social
direction for the sector founded in self-reliance and public enterprise
to guarantee the right of all to health care. Global
pharma is using well-funded neo-liberal think tanks and agencies to
divert public opinion into fights over drug prices and availability,
and away from a new direction of self-reliance and public enterprise.
Its campaign denounces government regulations and price controls as
unnecessary and damaging to global pharma and attempts to drag the
people into this debate and away from discussing a new direction.
Global pharma uses people with rare diseases and conditions to
demand the government fund their drug treatment at high prices. The
campaign is tied in with its push for an expanded public-private
national pharmacare system in which governments use public funds to buy
greater amounts of drugs from the global pharma cartels.[1] The
proposed public-private pharmacare system is similar to the current
health care system, which private interests mostly dominate with
governments reduced to handing out public money for the construction
and maintenance of hospitals and to pay for privately produced supplies
and pharmaceuticals, and for the operation of private clinics and
long-term care homes. Within the present situation,
global pharma makes predominant the issue whether governments should
regulate the market price of drugs or leave pricing to the drug
suppliers, and whether a public-private national pharmacare system
should be introduced or not. Patients with rare diseases are brought
forward to denounce any regulation of prices, arguing that all drugs
global pharma distributes should be made available at the prices the
companies demand. People are nudged to take positions for or against
price controls and a public-private pharmacare system, with these
issues the ones to be discussed, rather than assessing the situation of
health care and pharmaceutical supply as it poses itself and discussing
a new direction that guarantees the right of health for all. Are
Drug Prices the Issue? The drug prices global
pharma demands include private profit, which it says reflects the price
of production, in particular the value of research and development of
new drugs. This assertion raises the questions as to who decides the
direction of the research, what should be produced, how drugs should be
distributed and what happens to the new value pharmaceutical workers
produce, which includes the added-value or profit. Should these
important issues be left with global pharma whose aim is maximum profit
and not to guarantee the right of all to health care at the highest
level the productive forces and science have attained? Global
pharma says governments through regulation of prices often set market
prices at or below the "cost of production," meaning the drug cartels
cannot make private profit. Without prices they declare necessary, the
cartels say they cannot continue their research thus restricting new
treatments or even production of enough drugs, such as seasonal flu
vaccines and other medicines, to meet demand.  But is the price
of drugs the problem and issue at hand? In fact, this problem of market
prices would not exist if the pharmaceutical sector were organized in a
self-reliant way as a public enterprise and service with a public
authority in command that the people could trust and hold to account.
The sector would exist to serve the people and the health needs of the
entire population and guarantee the right of all to health care. The
value created in a self-reliant publicly controlled and owned industry,
as well as the social product itself, would go towards enhancing the
health of the people and guaranteeing the right of all to health care
at the highest level. The public realization of drug value would allow
that value to flow back into the sector and economy to improve health
care outcomes and to enhance the scientific capabilities and capacity
to work of all those involved, thus benefitting the entire people and
society. In the present conditions, the value that global pharma seizes
from the sale of drugs mostly leaves the economy and country.
With a public pharmaceutical sector, no need would exist for a
public-private pharmacare system and market and the payment of huge
funds from the public treasury to the private interests in control of
global pharma. Research and development of drugs would exist and be
developed within the public health care system by its workers. The
growing knowledge, competence, expertise and scientific advances could
be exchanged with others around the world in a spirit of mutual benefit
and cooperation and not competition for private gain. Human medical
knowledge and advances would become universal and for the benefit of
all in the spirit that we are one humanity. The
added-value workers produce in a public pharmaceutical sector when
realized would be poured back into the research and development and
production of pharmaceuticals in Canada for the good of the people and
their health, not for the narrow competing private interests of global
pharma. How pharmaceutical value is realized would become an issue for
the people to decide within the overall principle that health care is a
right held by all equally. The value workers create from a completely
public health care system would be realized and stay in Canada and
result in a growing value of the capacity to work of everyone and an
increased general health of the people and their social consciousness
and ability physically to combat and overcome crises such as the
COVID-19 pandemic. Who Controls? What Is the Aim?
The issue, as throughout the socialized economy and all its
sectors, is who controls and with what aim: the working people
themselves with the broad aim to serve the people and society, or
global investment cartels that have the narrow aim of making maximum
profit to serve their private interests.  Global pharma
wants to destroy public opinion for a new direction towards
self-reliance and public enterprise in the pharmaceutical
sector and throughout the health care industry. Global pharma is
desperate to save its private control over the pharmaceutical sector.
It wants public opinion diverted into a dead-end debate over the prices
it charges for drugs and the availability of those drugs rather than
delving into the root of the matter as it presents itself: the
necessity to guarantee the fundamental right to health care for all and
how this can be accomplished in the modern socialized world.
Matters
involving the common good and the health of people and society need
public solutions and an aim to serve the people and society. The health
care industry generally requires a new direction and aim to guarantee
the right of all to health care. The outmoded direction and aim of
global pharma for maximum profit and the private control generally of
the health care industry are not consistent with the modern direction
and aim to serve the people and society. The time
is now for self-reliance and public enterprise throughout the health
care industry, including importantly the pharmaceutical sector, to
guarantee the right of all to health care throughout their lives.
Note 1.
In June 2019, the Trudeau Liberal government issued the 172-page Final
Report of the Advisory Council on the Implementation of National
Pharmacare, entitled A
Prescription for Canada: Achieving Pharmacare for All.
In the introduction to the report that presents
the Advisory Council's mandate, any mention of the pharmaceutical
industry is conspicuously absent. The report merely says:
"Prescription drugs are an essential part of
health care. However, unlike hospital and physician services,
prescription drugs are not covered by medicare except when they're used
in hospitals. That's left a crucial part of effective health care
inconsistently funded and unevenly available, and means too many
patients are at risk of not getting the medication they need. The
situation has only gotten worse with the emergence of a growing number
of high-cost specialty drugs used to treat chronic, complex conditions
such as severe rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis and cancer.
These new treatments, along with a growing number of ultra-specialized
and expensive drugs for rare conditions, are threatening to overwhelm
both public and private insurance programs. "In
its 2018 budget, the federal government announced the creation of the
Advisory Council on the Implementation of National Pharmacare (the
council). The council's terms of reference are included in Annex 2. Its
task was to advise the government on introducing a national insurance
program for prescription drugs -- known as pharmacare -- which would be
affordable for Canadians, their employers and governments. The
government asked the council to undertake a dialogue with Canadians and
issued a discussion paper that outlined a range of possible options on
how to move forward with national pharmacare and highlighted the key
issues the council should address in its work."
The term "pharmaceutical industry" comes up a
handful of times in the report, only insofar as the Advisory Council
recommends better regulation of the industry and limiting industry
funding of the health care system to avoid undue influence.
The pharmaceutical industry -- how it operates,
who controls it and whose interests it serves -- is left completely out
of the discussion and is not to be questioned. In this way, such
arrangements can only be to facilitate pay-the-rich schemes in which
public funds are used to pay private interests in the name of a
"national pharmacare program."
This article was published in
Volume 50 Number 41 - October 31, 2020
Article Link:
Global Pharma Attacks Public Opinion - K.C. Adams
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
|
