SIMON BARBER: Big Pharma has drugged greedy US politicians
UNCHECKED, the medical-industrial complex is poisoning the US economy as it sucks up an ever larger share of the nation’s wealth, using its economic muscle to buy political complaisance. The only constitutional way it can be stopped is through the election of a president who will say enough is enough, backed by strong, like-minded majorities in both the Senate and House of Representatives, and, ultimately, on the supreme court.Achieving such majorities requires countervailing campaign money. Heroic wads of it. In 2010, the supreme court’s then conservative majority removed any limit on what corporations may spend at election time to preserve or increase the rents they collect with the help of their de facto hirelings in elected office.Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential candidate, wants to rein in Big Pharma, among other monied interests. Those who complain she spends more time schmoozing the mega-rich in the Hamptons than she does talking to the media need to understand sh...
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