Get this. I’ve suffered from Asthma ever since I was about 10 years old. I got it pretty well under control to the point where I was able to become a pretty good XC ski-racer in my early twenties. It was about 1997 or 1998 when I had just come off my best off-season of training and I was expecting to have a great racing season, when my Asthma became severely more complicated. Up until then, I had been using a Ventolin inhaler, which had worked fine. But all of a sudden, I found I still wasn’t getting a completely clear airway even with the medication.
I went into my doctor and told him about the problem. He informed me that a body can build up a tolerance to certain medications, and that since I had been using Ventolin for 10 years, it was time to change. He said there wasn’t a problem because there was a new miracle cure for Asthma called the Advair disk. This was a powder rather than an inhaler, and you took it twice a day.
He gave me a sample disk and I started in on the medication. It seemed to work just fine, so at the end of the month, when my sample disk had run out, I went down to the pharmacy to buy a new one. That’s when I discovered to my horror that the stupid disk cost $250!
A 20 year old kid cannot afford to pay $250 a month. That’s 3000$ a year. If you put that much money into a conservative investment at 20, you should be able to pay for your entire retirement. No fucking way was I going to pay that, and since my asthma was only exercise induced, I was able to just quit ski racing and pretty much live a normal life.
So, without ski racing to occupy me, I was able to concentrate on finishing college, and after college I eventually moved to Peru and started up this web page.
Fast forward to the present, where out of the blue, I decided to go into a pharmacy and see if they had the Advair inhaler. You don’t need a prescription to buy drugs in this country, that’s just one of the many things that make it so cool. I walked in and asked and the lady didn’t know what I was talking about. She didn’t have the Advair, but she had another disk that was designed to prevent Asthma. I bought the thing and then did some research on the internet. It turns out that the disk I bought was exactly the same medication as Advair.
And what did it cost?
50$! Yep, that’s right. 50 fucking dollars.
Since I assume that the disk I bought is priced so that GlaxoWellcome (the company that makes it) garners a hefty profit, I can only shudder to think of the amount Advair is raking in for its 250$ disk.
You know, I’m all for people getting paid a reasonable amount for the work they have done, but this is fucking ridiculous. You don’t deserve to mark up Asthma medication to 5 times more than a price that gives you a reasonable profit. I mean, don’t those assholes at Advair realize that by putting the price up so high all they are doing is preventing poor children from getting the proper medication! Fuck that shit. Why is it that in our society the only thing that makes people happy is money? Isn’t it enough of a reward to know that you came up with a great Asthma medication, and because of you children are able to run around and play who otherwise wouldn’t have?
And don’t start in with all that crap about how drugs that are manufactured in America are so much more pure and safe than those manufactured overseas. GlaxoWellcome is based in Greenford, England, and there is no amount of drug purification that the US is capable of doing that people in England aren’t.
How is this different than blackmail? Want to breathe, you have to pay 250$. How is it different than terrorism? Did you know that over 90% of the people with AIDS in the world don’t get proper medication because the drugs are priced out of what they can afford.
Somebody explain it to me, how is that different from murder?
Americans have this disgusting habit of putting on the blinders to moral questions whenever there is the possibility that they can make their “mystical American fortune.” Well fuck, some acts do have consequences, and not giving proper medication to children is pretty damn reprehensible. I hope that H2 you drive is worth it Advair executive, I hope your 4 hour lunches at the golf cart are soothing your conscience. I hope you’re getting what you feel you deserve now because someday I’m going to be in a position of power over somebody like you and I’m going to extract their luxury like a diseased tooth.
But not for myself. I’m going to give that luxury to some underprivileged kid, like a good human being should. It sounds corny, but just the knowledge that you aren’t suppressing and exploiting people gives you more satisfaction than anything you can buy with blood money.
The End