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Helen Santoro is is a reporter with the Lever based in Colorado.
Taking advantage of a broken patent system, Big Pharma is making minor tweaks to medications just to keep affordable generics off the market, a new report suggests. They’ve made billions of dollars in the process.
Six so-called patient advocacy groups are working to advance corporate profits in the pharmaceutical industry by routinely lobbying in line with Big Pharma’s priorities and opposing drug price negotiations.
Under Robert F. Kennedy Jr, the FDA has purged public health information on vaccines, contraception, HIV, and more. Internal FDA emails reveal deceptive practices that are anything but the “radical transparency” Kennedy promised.
Health insurer Blue Cross Blue Shield just adopted a policy that will force many people with serious asthma and allergy conditions to self-inject vital medications at home. The move raises risks for patients while cutting costs for the insurance giant.
Nonprofit hospital chains are buying up billions of dollars’ worth of real estate across the US, dodging property taxes using their charity status.
Warren Buffett’s conglomerate, Berkshire Hathaway, profited off sale of a makeup ingredient that has been linked to cancer. The company is using fancy legal footwork to try to get out of paying remuneration to its victims.
The federal government has spent $6.2 billion on research and development for weight-loss drugs. Now, thanks to Big Pharma markups, Americans are paying up to 11 times more for these drugs than patients in other countries, despite already footing the bill.
Amazon helped fund Donald Trump’s inauguration. The retail giant and the insurer UnitedHealth waited less than a day to start begging the new administration to shut down their shareholders’ calls for transparency.
Drugmakers offer “copay assistance programs” to help people afford expensive medicines. But health insurers are milking these programs for billions of dollars in extra profits while denying patients the benefits they were designed to provide.
In the US, more and more doctors are now affiliated with the hospital conglomerates or Wall Street firms taking over the health care system — and these doctors tend to charge significantly more for office visits than independent practitioners do.
Direct-to-consumer drug ads are prohibited in almost all countries besides the US. By leading doctors to prescribe unnecessary and more expensive treatments at the request of their patients, they also raise health care costs across the board.
Big Tech and Wall Street are deploying an on-demand nursing model across America. Created to solve a nursing shortage that doesn’t exist, it creates unsafe conditions for both medical professionals and patients.
The top five health insurers have raked in over $371 billion in profits since ACA passed. Over 40% of that went to the parent company of CEO Brian Thompson’s UnitedHealthcare, UnitedHealth Group — which denies nearly one in three claims from its policyholders.
Donald Trump’s pick to head the Internal Revenue Service pressed the agency to investigate and consider stripping the country’s leading animal welfare group, the Humane Society, of its tax status. As IRS chief, he’d be in a position to make that happen.
Democrats could actually do a lot in the months before Donald Trump takes office to impose guardrails against the next four years of deregulatory and extreme pro-business policies.
Wall Street–backed charity funds provide ultrawealthy donors with massive charitable tax breaks — yet operate without any requirement to ever distribute the money to working charities.
The Biden Justice Department just announced it is making it easier for corporate lawbreakers to avoid prosecution — even if they have committed multiple crimes, earned significant profit from their wrongdoing, and failed to self-disclose the misconduct.
Lobbying by the chemical industry and weak regulations are obscuring details about industrial toxins contaminating areas hit by disasters like Hurricane Helene. If Trump takes office, his administration will likely weaken disclosure rules further.
As Hurricane Milton bears down on their districts, two Republican representatives backed by fossil fuel companies are pushing legislation that claims the climate crisis is a “false emergency.”
Before Kamala Harris became vice president, she had a clear message about dark money groups: they play a dangerously influential role in our political system. Now her campaign is reaping the rewards of massive donations from these very sources.