-- Connecting the dots between our economy, government and business --
Summary and audio linked here.
Chicago’s political leadership is floating a pension buyout program as evidence it is seriously addressing the city’s thirty-six-billion-dollar unfunded pension liability, but Mark Glennon, founder of the Illinois policy research organization Wirepoints, said that the proposal moves debt from one column to another rather than reducing it, and that the broader fiscal picture facing the city continues to deteriorate across every measurable dimension. Audio here.
Expect no retraction or apology. This what they do.
The state’s existing buyout program for its own pensions is the precedent for Chicago, which should be a warning: Look out for similar exaggerated claims and shoddy analysis.
Full interview and summary linked here.
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The capping of $100 per vile for those who need insulin is good but does Illinois still pay full price? If they do the taxpayers will pay the difference. I doubt if Illinois made deals with the companies. There are 3 companies in the world that produce 90% of all insulin Eli Lilly-Novo Nordisk-and Sanofi. The manufacturing cost varies per vile from $2.28 to $6.16 but charges around $450. Even though insulin is off patent these companies can have other patents called “Evergreening” which gives them more than the original 20 years up to 37 years. It would be good… Read more »
The cost of insulin is high because it is a biologic rather than a chemical compound. There will never be a “generic” insulin only a biosimilar. Which means that the barriers to entry to make the biologic is much more expensive and also why there are few companies selling it. If it was so easy and inexpensive to make as you say then there would be a line of companies looking to get in on that action until it was no longer profitable to do so. If another company did want to come in they would need to perform all… Read more »
““If there are price caps that is going to restrict the amount of money that [drug companies] might be able to put into research and it might cause them to start going more outside of the United States for ingredients,” Castillo said.” This broker is a LIAR. The Big Three insulin makers are clearly colluding (price-fixing) and to suggest that they need to charge 10 time more today than they did a few years ago (or else innovation will end) is so egregious a lie that works fail to describe it. I worked in Big Pharma. The rationalizations for profiteering… Read more »
Big Phrama knows that Big Regulation is coming sooner rather than later and they are squeezing all the profits they can, while they can, before the music stops. Awful, of course, and the wrong course of action.