Opioid antidotes and the huge profits they generate

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In 2016, 36 states joined a lawsuit against Reckitt Benckiser Group that alleged that the company had profited from the opioid crisis and siphoned money from Medicaid. The drug company allegedly worked to preserve its monopolistic hold on profits drawn from its control of addiction treatment drug Suboxone.

The 2016 lawsuit in Philadelphia has received little news coverage since its announcement. Reckitt is accused of spinning the court case out and has banked $5.8 billion in revenue from Suboxone just while the trial has been pending. It’s another example of a corporation tying up legal proceedings as it continues to profit off alleged bad practices. (From Tarbell, who investigate the activities of profiteering Big Pharma companies).

If you follow the money you discover why it is so difficult to police American pharmaceutical companies, and why the rational and common sense idea of allowing Medicare and Medicaid to negotiate prices, as is done centrally in other advanced countries, will never happen because Big Pharma fund the politicians. A huge, corrupt system which acts against the interests of the poor and sick. Meanwhile, we have a government trying to ensure that poor people have zero healthcare. No wonder Epicurus despise politics and politicians!

Further education again: the decline of the liberal arts

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The proportion of university undergraduates studying the liberal arts in the US has fallen by almost 50% since 1970. Business studies is the favourite; up and coming are statistics and data science.

The justification for studying the liberal arts – set out several times on this blog over the years – is that they teach people to problem solve, to communicate effectively, and to think for themselves.  The liberal arts should also prepare people for the increasing possibility that their chosen profession eventually disappears altogether. These reasons fall upon deaf ears, despite the fact that out of the 10 million jobs created in the United States since 2012, only 6% were in areas related to software, and information technology, and most were non-technical. What those in the liberal arts are well set up for are fast-growing areas like project management, market research, fundraising, and jobs where you have to think on your feet, work with ambiguity, write and speak well, and, most importantly, relate to and manage other people.

In my opinion, Business Studies as a first degree is a total waste of time, unless you are very lucky and are taught by someone who has had extensive business experience, has a sense of humour (the theory is boring), and who really understands and is good at people management (rare birds). If this latter is happily the case, then I’m surprised he or she isn’t “doing” rather than “teaching” the subject.

Politics are worse now that earmarks are banned

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“The problem with Washington today is that there just isn’t enough bribery. In the old days, when parties lacked a few crucial votes to pass important legislation, they could win over opponents with the help of so-called earmarks. These were sentences included in spending bills that directed some of the money to specific projects – a new day centre, a new motorway junction – at the request of a member of Congress. This pork barrel politics wasn’t pretty but it did grease the wheels of Congress. In 2011, however, Congress bowed to campaigners and banned earmarks.

“The then-Republican Speaker John Boehner said he hoped the move would stop members of Congress viewing politics in “transactional” terms, and encourage them to “think on a higher plane”. The effect has not been so benign. Having reduced Washington politics to “a pure battle of ideologies”, there are fewer opportunities for compromise and fewer downsides for members of Congress when bills fail. “After all, it’s not going to contain any goodies for your district, so who cares?” Earmarks may have been “unseemly”, but they were a price worth paying “to keep the government humming along”. (Kevin Drum, Mother Jones)

One could argue that the deep, tribal divisions in the country embrace a host of issues and for a host of reasons. But the incompetence and incapacity of Congress is truly scary. Kevin Drum has a very good point – if Congressmen had an incentive to cooperate with the opposite party we would see some progress. But they are hammered back home if they are seen to be too moderate (which means crossing party lines). Clearly, those who pushed through the change on earmarks were incapable of imagining the worst possible outcome – an ineffective government.

All that now matters is raising money, money, money, and keeping the financial backers happy. Exhibit One is the so-called Tax Reform bill, which is one of the most gross bribes in history (bribes to donors, thst is), and will result in horrendous deficits and no more growth than there would have been anyway.

Why is this posting is on an Epicurean blog? Because I am very fearful for the country, as are so many people who try to look ahead and know their history. Did the Civil War dver really end? Why does it seem to keep popping back up in various guises, albeit peacefully at present? The bullying corruption and lies are, at the very least, very bad both for morale and ataraxia.

An interesting take on Brexit

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Anthony Bennett is the author of a book called “The Lure of Greatness: England’s Brexit and America’s Trump”. The author writes that Brexit was the result of successive breaches of trust on the part of the British ruling class. This included the calamity of the Iraq war, the 2008 financial crash and the bank bailout, paid for, not by bankers, but by the people. Along with these two events you got the decline of the monarchy, the constitutional reforms, the decline of the patrician class and the parallel rise of a celebrity mediocracy. Worse
was the English disenfranchisement and the lack of a specific English parliament, which meant that Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish have their feelings of identity catered to, but not the English.

An IPPR survey of 2014 found that, being deprived of a credible, representative power that belongs to them, people rebelled, not against the English politicians who presided over the series of mis-steps, but against the most remote authority of all – the EU. It is not the EU itself, Barnett argues, that is the main target of Brexit, but the unrepresentative British State. Only when England has dispensed with Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland (mainly the legacy of the Norman Conquest, nearly 1000 years ago), can England free itself to be a European country.

There are, of course, several other factors: immigration, nostalgia for lost world influence, the dissatisfaction of older, conservative people, the lingering class system, the loss of a feeling of community, the growing discourtesy and perceived lack of respect. And of course, economic problems, not the least of which are short-term work contracts and a growing gap between rich and poor. One could go on, but the author’s comments about the constitution are interesting. I for one identify with the constitutional observation, although I have never thought it through or articulated my feelings. The United Kingdom increasingly seems to be a throwback, a relic of empire. If the Scots want independence, well, why not. All these smaller entities could have been accommodated under the EU umbrella. But we missed the opportunity.