Marty
Shkreli Is The Face Of Everything Wrong With Healthcare In America
On August 4th, 2017, a federal jury found former hedge-fund
leader and so-called “Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli guilty
of three counts of securities fraud.
You remember Marty, right? This is
the man who bought the company that made the life-saving drug Daraprim and then
jacked up the price some 5000 percent. He
then smirked as he invoked the Fifth Amendment in front of Congress over his
actions.
Yeah, that’s Marty.
Unfortunately, the convictions are not for what he did with Turing Pharmaceuticals. They involved his actions prior to his infamous
price hike, and it concerned another company that he took over. Because, you know, it’s like potato chips;
you can’t just stop at one.
Of course, that’s not all that he did to win the title of “Eternal
Arrogant Prick”. He did a few other
things too. Like buy
the rights to an unreleased album by the Wu-Tang Clan and then said it will
never be heard by anyone else but him.
And then later he promised a “one-time only” broadcast, and it was a
live-stream of him playing the album while talking over it.
And let’s not forget that he didn’t change his attire one bit when he was
in federal court facing a judge and jury over his actions. When most people are in court, they wear a
suit and a tie if they’re not obligated to wear a prison jumpsuit. Not Marty!
He shows up for the verdict in a polo shirt like it was traffic court. No respect for the process or for the idea
that he could be sent to prison.
What really bothers me, though, is that there are some people that think
that Shkreli should be freed!
One author, Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, penned a
head-bashing argument for “The Week” magazine where he declared that
Shkreli shouldn’t have faced charges in the first place, and that he should be
hailed as an “American hero” for doing what he did. I don’t know if Mr. Gobry is being satirical
or if he needs to pee in a cup and be tested for hallucinogens. Then again, brutal mob boss Al Capone was
considered an “American hero” at one time.
So were Bonnie and Clyde.
And then I realized what was really behind the arrogant smirk just
begging to be slapped off.
I suspect that Marty Shkreli really doesn’t believe that he did anything
wrong... because he’s just mimicking the actions shown by the two biggest
pillars in America today: Big Finance and Big Healthcare.
Take a look at Wells Fargo, one of the “too big to fail and too big to
jail” banks that the American taxpayers helped bail out in 2008. Just last year they got caught creating
multiple fake accounts of their account-holders for services they never asked
for or agreed to. And that
may be just the tip of the iceberg.
We are talking about rampant and systemic fraud in an industry that
already got bailed out for their fraud and misrepresentation during the Great
Recession without one single key player in that collapse ever facing trial for
their criminal activities. Not one!
Do you honestly think that anyone in the executive level at Wells Fargo –
past or present – will ever face trial for their criminal actions? Of course not! The instigators and the people that profited
the most from lies and fraud will never face justice. Ever.
You don’t think people like Marty Shkreli don’t see this and learn from
it? If you have money, you can get away
with anything. That’s the lesson that
was taught to America by then-Attorney General Eric Holder when it came to the
banks: you can buy your way out of justice.
Hell, we just elected a man who boasted that he can do anything he wants
as long as he has money into the White House!
I’m guessing that Marty is thinking he didn’t know whose palms to
grease. Hey, if it worked for Goldman
Sachs, Bank of America, Chase, Capitol One, and Wells Fargo, why not “Pharma
Bro”?
And then there’s Big Healthcare... and here it is easy to see where
people like Marty get their arrogance.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it here: healthcare in America has
always been seen as a matter of financial privilege, not as a right. Not only that, but it has also been a system
that has been gamed for a really long time, and not just by the scam
artists. The real scams are done within
the healthcare system itself, and they’re not only legal, but they’re
considered normal business!
Think about the games played by Big Insurance and Big Hospitals, where
you get stuck with the bill for out-of-network doctors that show up without
your permission for a “consultation”.
Think about the number of instances where people get pestered from bill
collectors because the “reliable insurance provider” is slow to pay a bill that
they know they are obligated to cover.
And how about Big Pharma, Marty’s home turf when he isn’t snatching up
unreleased albums and then taunting fans?
Think about all of the drugs out there that are needed that are in the
hands of one company exclusively. Isn’t
that a blatant violation of federal anti-trust laws? Well apparently not if the monopoly is
created through corporate disinterest or government manipulation. After all, Big Pharma is in it for the
profit, not the people.
That, boys and girls, is the true purpose of healthcare in America. It’s not about healing people or helping
people. It is about profit, plain and
simple. Sell a pill, sell a treatment,
sell a program or a therapy, write up that extra expense, throw in that added
consultation, drag out the payment until the next quarter and pocket the
interest, and hope that the patient doesn’t die… or, even worse, get healthy.
Let’s get brutally honest here… Martin Shkreli is the arrogant smirking
face of everything wrong with healthcare in America. He is the epitome of greed… one might even
say “American Greed”… that
motivates the parasitic industries that prey on our mortality and on our
misery.
This is the reason why every idea to “fix” the problem with healthcare in
America is doomed to fail. This is the
reason why the Affordable Care Act or “Obamacare” is failing right now. Here is a system that was almost literally
written word-for-word by the industry, designed to give the billionaires
insurance companies and billionaire pharma companies and billionaire hospital
corporations and millionaire doctors access to every American and their
wallets, and it still is not enough to satisfy their blind, stinking greed! It is the very reason why people will push
for the single-payer or government-controlled healthcare system, and it is also
the very reason why every one of the Marty Shkrelis in Big Healthcare will
fight it at every opportunity… because of their own blind, stinking greed.
People like Martin Shkreli are a product of the failures in our society.
The failure of the financial sector to contain their greed. The failure of those in government to
represent the people and not big corporations.
The failure of the healthcare industry in not reining in the systemic
fraud within their own ranks and instead whine about the external fraud. Maybe we are holding Shkreli to account for
the sins of the healthcare industry as a whole.
But we have to start somewhere, and the first place you go after to
clean up a systemic failure is the loudest, the most blatant, and the most
unrepentant.
And that, Mister Martin Shkreli, is you.
Own it.
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