Honeybee Health pharmacy is breaking Big Pharma’s drug price stranglehold

[dropcap]F[/dropcap]or well over a century now the savage capitalist way of life—make that "the American Way of Life"— has dominated and grotesquely misruled healthcare in the United States, its abuses by now legendary.  Big Pharma, a key component of the notorious triad comprising doctors, hospitals and the pharmaceutical industry, has long exploited its de facto and virtually unchallenged monopolistic position to extract superprofits from a disorganised and profoundly misinformed public, a public with no real representation in Congress, nor in most state legislatures.

This has forced many needy, and even middle class, Americans to seek refuge in foreign pharmacies and sometimes dubious medications providers.  Michael Moore, before he lost his head and political acumen to the Democrat-induced Trump Derangement Syndrome,  made a very fine movie about this critical topic, Sicko. If you haven't seen it, do yourself a favor and watch it. It's a must-see documentary. Granted, it's not like the subject is buried, like so many other important stories. It could not be, it's much too important to people's lives. So from time to time even the whorish corporate press files articles highlighting the criminal absurdity of our utterly commercialised drug regime. (When they do that they almost always forget to mention the problem lies with capitalist dynamics). Just recently, in July, PBS filed a report, Skyrocketing cost of insulin pushes Americans to buy drug in Canada, which eloquently summed up the hard dilemma faced by so many Americans. The Newshour tersely noted,

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Insulin is a vital drug that some 7.4 million Americans must take daily to manage their diabetes. But its price nearly doubled from 2012 to 2016, leaving some patients with no choice but to turn to black-market drugs or traveling to Canada, where insulin can be 90 percent cheaper. Special correspondent Sarah Varney reports on the skyrocketing cost of insulin -- and the trend's deadly consequences.

This is reason why today there are literally tens of millions of highly disatisfied if not plain outraged customers with the Big Pharma racket in the US alone. In fact, the government has reached such a level of corruption under the reigning duopoly that during Obama's regime, he refused to allow the negotiation of volume prices with drug providers for Medicare, a critical program, something done routinely by almost every other nation with a claim to civilised status, and a practice endorsed by the VA itself, which, not accidentally, is also one of the best run medical systems in the world. (For an answer to that apparent contradiction, see this recent artcile by our associate editor David Pear: The Veteran Health Administration is the Best Healthcare Anywhere! and this, by your humble servitor, Time to ban the profit motive from the healthcare system.)

In any case, with the eternally bribed Congress offering no relief, just more misleading rhetoric, and with the White House occupied by equally treacherous demagogs, people have begun to take matters in their own hands. This is the political and social backdrop for the rise of a pharmacy like Honeybee Health, which is unique so far in that it is a nonprofit founded by activist pharmacists. Read and watch the report below, and let's hope that this pharmacy business model dedicated to the patient's interest finally prospers.
—PG