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from the the-enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend,-right? dept.
Martin Shkreli, the former CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals AG, has launched a list to shame other pharmaceutical companies:
This week, a pharmaceutical trade group stepped up its efforts to distance itself from Martin Shkreli, the disgraced ex-CEO of several drug companies who gained notoriety for an eye-popping drug price increase and an indictment for securities fraud. The trade group even made a television ad to try to bolster its image and make clear that it is different—better—than the likes of Shkreli and his greedy ways.
Is it, though? If you ask Shkreli, it's not. And he's made a website to try to convince you.
On the bare-bones Pharmaskeletons.com, an angry and vengeful Shkreli lists instances of greed, criminal behavior, and other sleaziness of individual members of the pharmaceutical trade group PhRMA. Not all his claims are backed up, explained, or accurate. But the site still offers an embarrassing catalogue of bad deeds, which Shkreli told STAT he would continually update.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday January 26 2017, @05:54PM
No, no that's not how health care works in America. You wait until your health needs are dire, then go to emergency. That's the medical place with all those signs announcing that it is illegal for them to deny you care just because you have an unpaid debt with them. Afterwards, when you are no longer at death's door, if not fully recovered, they send you a bill with fantasy prices in which everything has been inflated at least 20 times. At least. 200 times is common. We're not talking a piddly 100% profit margin, no, we're talking 20,000%. We're talking $300 for a $1.50 bag of saline solution, aka salt water, $20 for a $0.10 aspirin, a "facility fee" of over $1000 just because they had to suffer the presence of your sorry behind in a room, and that's just the hospital. The doctors and labs will each bill you separately.
If you have insurance, the insurer will cut those prices by various amounts in a highly opaque and mysterious manner that amounts to about 75% off. But, strangely, the hospital may offer 85% to 90% off if you are uninsured. If you're inexperienced, you will waste time arguing over these insane bills. Sooner or later, you will understand what your next step is: refuse to pay all of even the discounted amount. Of course then you will be hounded by their debt collectors. So you use the next little piece of this system, the laws that forbid debt collectors from hounding you. You tell them not to call you, and they have to stop calling.
The debt collectors will try to threaten and scare you. They may tell you that they will sue. As I understand it, it's illegal for them to make such threats, especially if they have no intention of following through. Sue or do not sue, don't threaten to sue. They will also threaten to trash your credit rating. Well, guess what? There's another piece of the puzzle on that point. The private companies that maintain credit ratings recently changed their system to lessen the severity of medical debt. If (big if) the only kind of delinquent debt you have is medical, your credit rating will hardly be damaged.
The final piece is the statute of limitations. Many offenses drop off a person's record after 7 years, and unpaid debt is one of those. It's a little tricky though. There are ways to "restart" the clock, and debt collectors try to trick you into doing something that counts as restarting the clock.
Some other things you can do is stuff like timing your medical care. If it's the end of the year and you can hold off until the new year, do so. Want to load as much medical care as possible into the same year, to meet those deductibles. It's stupid that the system works that way, but there it is.
Very cynical. The whole system is a (sick pun intended) sick joke.