Epipen CEO is Senators daughter that raised price from $100 to $600

[RolloTheGreat]

I get that the government is a big customer, but I doubt the profits on Mylan stock outweigh the cost of epipens. If there is one industry that likes to take our money and keep it more than pharma, it's insurance.

Total expenditures for medical in the US last year was ~$3Trillion. Total revenue for Epipen was $1Billion, globally. Just for the hell of it, we'll assume that every penny of Epipen revenue was from the US, that gives us 0.03% of total healthcare expenditures. I wasn't talking about the insurance companies volunteering, I was talking about the possibility of mutual fund managers leveraging them to do so. To give a rough idea, there are 1,810 billionaires on the planet holding a total of $6.5 trillion dollars in wealth(via Forbes)- Vanguard mutual funds handle $3.6 Trillion by themselves. They have more then half the wealth under their thumb of every billionaire in the world *combined*. Now if your company, hell- *any* company- had half of all the worlds billionaires telling them to do one thing that would negatively impact their bottom line by 0.03%- what company is going to say no? I just don't see it happening.

Take a five year swing and we are seeing the market capitalization of Mylan up around 300%, Anthem(parent of BlueCross/BlueShield) in that same time period is up about 100%. In absolute terms, Mylan has $23 Billion in market cap today, Anthem has $32 Billion in market cap. When looking at the largest factor, by *miles* in this instance, the difference maker in valuation is profit generation via Epipen(almost half of all of Mylan's profits).

In no way comprehensible am I trying to defend nor rationalize this- this is a function of corporatism. On the most basic level I am a lunatic *individualist*- I think people are best served having as much determination over themselves as is reasonable. Corporatism is directly aligned with communism in terms of ideological philosophy- centralization and financial engineering designed to serve the betterment of the corporation as a whole no matter the detrimental effects to the bodies involved. I am an ardent capitalist, but we are no longer operating under that philosophy, the markets have moved on, centralization has made maximizing profits secondary to RoI, improving the economic of your community, state or country now pales in comparison to expanding the economic conditions of the world. It is a shit show.

No joke on "I am outta here" if the masses ever start killing the rich.

Heh, you and I share a common bond in the fact that we play the game we are given. No businessman on Earth, no group of the 5000 richest businessmen on Earth can change what is happening with the world today, only the people who vote these people in can make the changes necessary. I don't particularly like checkers, never been a big fan of the game, never cared for the way the rules were structured nor how limited the options in the game were. That said, it has been a couple of decades since I lost a game. Whatever I am made to play, I'm going to try and do whatever I can to win(in the instance of my life, winning to me is a balance between how much I want to devote to work versus an acceptable level of income for my family).

I get mutual funds and other financial conglomerates exert influence, but even that is not all "bad". The people administering the funds have "good jobs", are "tax paying citizens that help fuel the economy". The investors in the funds profit along with them, this is what a modern day "pension" is. You invest your money along the way and hope to build up a million or two to supplement your Social Security. The funds investments help companies survive or grow, and in turn provide good jobs for other tax paying citizens.

It's not all just Bill Gates and Warren Buffet saying, "Meh, I want to make a few billion today and maybe buy Puerto Rico. Send a memo to that Bresch peon to hike the price of Epipens 500%!".

While corporatism on it's face may seem unequivocally ominous and evil, it "is" the game now as far as I can tell.

So I can try to position myself and my family to prosper within the game, or I can post,"Nuh uh. The revolution is a comin'! Someday soon we're all going to be CEOs and enjoying the bounty this land has to offer!".

I'm not going to do the latter for the same reason I don't live in an opium den. I don't like losing either, and maximize my enjoyment of life wherever and whenever possible.