“5 of the largest US pharma firms totaled $80 billion in profits, but millions of Americans can’t afford medicine,”

US Sen. Bernie Sanders

By Dan Murphy

The phrase “politics makes strange bedfellows” certainly applies to a recent Opinion column by Senator Bernie Sanders, which I found at Foxnews.com. (https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/greedy-pharma-firms-rip-off-americans-while-pfizer-moderna-swim-profits).

The progressive Senator and the conservative news site seemed to agree on the headline of Sanders column: Greedy pharma firms rip off Americans while Pfizer, Moderna swim in profits.

“On one of the most important matters facing our country the American people — Democrats, Republicans, Independents, Progressives, Conservatives — could not be more united. And that is the need to take on the unprecedented corporate greed of the pharmaceutical industry and to substantially lower the outrageously high price of prescription drugs.”

“All over this country, the American people are asking, why it is that they pay, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs?” Sanders wrote. “Why is it that nearly 1 out of every 4 adults in America cannot afford their prescription medication?

“How is it that in Canada and other major countries the same medications manufactured by the same companies, sold in the same bottles are available for a fraction of the price that we pay in the United States? The answers can be summed up in three words: Follow the money.”

“Several years ago, I took a busload of people with diabetes from Detroit, Michigan, to a drugstore in Windsor, Ontario. There, they were able to purchase the same insulin products they bought in the United States for one-tenth the price,” writes Sanders.