hedge funds and pharma do not mix (IMO)

musicprnt
Sun, 20 Dec 2015 01:24:18 +0000

“Could any of your kids have done something like this??” I don’t think my son could, he has a sense of ethics a lot stronger then probably my own are. That said, I suggest you read some of the posts on the boards on here about getting into the elite schools from the parents and their attitudes and assumptions about how to get their kids into these schools and why they want them there, and it will give you insight. Nothing like this surprises me, while there are a lot of people in the financial industry whom the words greedy, unethical, or wiin at any cost’ and so forth hold true, hedge funds tend to especially attract that kind of person, a lot of what they do quite frankly is ‘get rich quick’, and more than a bit of what they do is dubious, if you believe that the financial markets are there to provide working capital or to use the marketplace to get goods from supplier to provider (commodities markets). Their whole existence is predicated on rapid, large returns, and it generates the kind of culture that drives a piece of crap like this delta bravo. I am sure the defenses are already in place from the great pr machine that seems to float around the rich and less than ethical, how while they generate huge profits, how they may seem like they don’t care about people, etc, I am sure you will get how they donate money to charity, how they really care about their communities and so forth, have seen plenty of it in my time around the industry, saw plenty of that when people complained about financial firms and hedge funds getting bailed out, and hearing that this was only fair, that these companies ‘did so much for the economy’ so therefore deserved it (I would never say that, I think they got bailed out because they were allowed to pollute the financial and banking systems, the only thing they all deserved was to be ruined and sent to jail).

As far as why drugs are expensive here, a lot of that has to do with anti competition regulation. For example, even if you have a prescription, technically buying drugs overseas or from Canada is illegal, there are laws that strictly prohibit that. Insurance companies, who you figure would have reason to search out cheap prices, have close ties to the Pharmaceutical industry. Medicare and other government health insurance programs are forbidden from using their size to negotiate prices by law, many of those who talk abut the power of the market and so forth to bring down health care prices helped pass these laws. One of the reasons drugs are cheaper in Canada and other countries is not because the cost of production (put it this way, around 95% of the components that make up drugs are manufactured in low cost countries like India, as are many of the generic products sold by generic providers), but rather those countries have price controls. Rather than not sell the drugs there, since they make money even at the cheaper prices, the drug companies in effect subsidize that with the high price of drugs here in the US, which insurance companies pay and then pass it on to the policy holders). It is one of the reasons the drug companies are fighting a single payer system, they are afraid that they won’t be able to have this kind of system going down the road.