Healthcare activist Cathy Courtney speaks on Medicare Advantage. Moderna's record profit shame!
Cathy Courtney fights for healthcare for all, from sleep to wake, with her personal and public experiences. Moderna's billions in profits are the instantiation of our fraudulent healthcare system.
Cathy Courtney fights for healthcare for all.
The healthcare industrial complex, specifically the health insurance industry, has been methodically undermining your healthcare cost and your health with smoke and mirrors. They are saving millions of American money in the short term as they drain the real Medicare Coffers by privatizing Medicare on the sly with their misleadingly named product, Medicare Advantage. It is not Medicare. It is private insurance that must make a profit for its shareholders and big bonuses for the executives who run it on the backs of taxpayers.
Unfortunately, these health insurance companies do not only work on fooling Americans. They pay off many in our government to ensure it does not provide Americans with the necessary care. Why does Medicare Advantage provide eyes, dental, and hearing care while standard Medicare does not unless you purchase a rider? The health insurance industry bribes your Washington politicians via their lobbyists and campaign contribution not to make that a part of standard Medicare. Senator Bernie Sanders continuously attempts to get those services as a standard part of Medicare, but too many politicians are on the take. That is why we must elect the Progressives that will give all Americans a better life with human-centered policies that benefit us all instead of corporate-centered policies that only benefit a select few.
Cathy Courtney is a valiant activist who helps people throughout the country navigate our fraudulent healthcare system, whether they are trapped in Medicare Advantage or trapped in bills they are unable to afford. She knows that we have a lot of work to do, and she is doing her part not only in bringing awareness to the issue but helping those trapped by it.
Moderna's record profit shame!
The profits that Moderna has accumulated from their COVID-based tyranny should infuriate us all. Common Dreams reported the following.
The Massachusetts-based pharmaceutical giant Moderna announced Thursday that it brought in over $19 billion in revenue and $8.4 billion in profits in 2022 thanks primarily to its Covid-19 vaccine, which was made possible by federal funding and government technology.
"U.S. taxpayers and people all over the world should be furious," Maaza Seyoum, Global South convenor of the People's Vaccine Alliance, said in response to Moderna's earnings report. "It was built on decades of publicly funded research into mRNA vaccines. And it was developed in partnership with the U.S. National Institutes of Health. This should be the people's vaccine, available and affordable to everyone, everywhere, not a goldmine for Big Pharma."
“Moderna's revenue in 2022 alone is equivalent to the combined health budgets of 68 countries," Seyoum noted. "Already, the company expects to make more from the vaccine in 2023 than the combined health budgets of 42 countries." As CNBCreported, "Moderna has contracts on the books for $5 billion in Covid vaccine deliveries for 2023."
Moderna sold $18.4 billion worth of its coronavirus vaccine—the company's only product on the market—last year while rejecting calls to share critical technology with the rest of the world, denying low-income countries the ability to quickly produce lifesaving shots for their populations.
Tim Bierley, a pharma campaigner at the U.K.-based advocacy group Global Justice Now, said Thursday that "history will not be kind to Moderna, whose scandalous profits are a direct result of the company's refusal to share vaccine technology with the Global South, even when it was clear that global shortages would be deadly."
"Millions of people around the world are now grieving the loss of family members, many of whom were unable to get a Covid-19 vaccine," said Bierley. "Moderna's pandemic profiteering is even more shocking given that the U.S. public-funded 100% of this vaccine's development. Now the company is brazenly threatening to hike prices on its vaccine—but governments should refuse to be held to ransom. And well before the next pandemic, we must make sure that taxpayer money comes with conditions that put lives above profits."
It is time for we-the-people to get involved. This is legalized thievery.
These subjects are the topics of discussion today on Politics Done Right on KPFT 90.1 FM Houston today at Noon Central Time (1 PM Eastern/10 AM Pacific/11 AM Mountain). You can listen to it on air at 90.1 FM in the Houston metropolitan area or at politicsdoneright.tv.
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