AnonTechie [soylentnews.org] writes:
Big pharma companies exert considerable influence on US trade policy. Research by the Sunlight Foundation shows that the pharmaceutical industry has been lobbying for the measures it wants in TPP longer and more consistently than any other sector. For example, one of the most important — and contentious — chapters of TPP is about keeping drug prices artificially high (
https://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2014/03/13/tpp-lobby/ [sunlightfoundation.com] ). Big pharma has also been vocal in calling for the European Union to be put on the Special 301 Report's "Priority Watch List" for daring to require that basic safety data about drugs be made available. Given this wide-ranging support from the US government, you'd think that pharmaceutical companies would be only happy to pay back in the form of taxes, say, but as Quartz points out, that's far from the case: (http://qz.com/212657/american-drug-companies-dont-want-to-pay-us-taxes-but-they-want-global-customers-to-pay-us-drug-prices/ )
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140604/09230727456/big-pharma-companies-happy-to-use-us-government-to-push-industry-agenda-not-so-happy-to-pay-us-taxes.shtml [techdirt.com]
Original Submission
