Posted on 10/12/2017 8:36:47 AM PDT by Kaslin
Monday was Columbus Day, or as liberals have taken to calling, “Indigenous People’s Day.” Democrats love sowing division, blaming Europeans for all of the world’s ills, and elevating the status of Native Americans. Well, they usually do. When it’s a choice between a long-dead Italian guy and American Indians, the choice is easy. When the choice is between their own reelection and anything, everything else loses to self-preservation.
Such is the case with Missouri Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill.
One of my first jobs in Washington was as a health policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation. While it may not sound exciting, it wasn’t. Just kidding, mostly.
But in that job I had to study the prescription drug market – how drugs came to market, the testing process and cost, the way prices were negotiated, the constant demands for lower prices, etc. So, while I no longer do that for a living, I do keep up with it from time to time.
That’s how a story in Newsweek came to my attention. The title seemed like clickbait, “How Racism Is Fueling A Pharma Scandal Over A Billion-Dollar Patent.” The story, however, was anything but.
It involves a prescription drug you’ve probably seen ads for – Restasis. It’s for combatting chronic dry eyes, which I’m lucky enough to say does not impact me. But it impacts someone or else the company that created it, Allergan, wouldn’t have spent the time and money developing it.
It takes, on average, ten years and a billion dollars to bring a new drug to market. That’s just the ones that survive testing and trials. And that billion dollars does not include drugs where development and trials go on for, say, seven years and $500 million. Research and development in the pharmaceutical industry are not cheap. For all the complaints about drug prices, no one complains when they cure or come up with a better treatment for something.
As you can imagine, these companies are not only easy targets for desperate politicians looking for a boogeyman in election cycles, they’re also fiercely protective of their patents. No recouping the cost of their product, no new products.
Allergan was facing such a challenge, a legal one to their patent for the eye drops. And to save themselves they found a creative way to protect themselves – an Indian tribe.
Tribes in the US have a protection reserved for governments – sovereign immunity.
Sovereign immunity basically insulates state governments from being sued, unless they are violating the Constitution. It’s a protection that, in the US, is granted by the 11th Amendment.
What Allegan did was to “sell” the patent for Restasis to the Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe of upstate New York. This could effectively end the lawsuits challenging their patents since the tribe enjoys immunity.
Whatever you think of the strategy, it’s legally brilliant. The tribe gets the patent, then “licenses” back to the company in exchange for $15 million per year till the patent runs out.
But, as is always the case when someone figures out a way to use the laws lawmakers create to immunize themselves, Senator McCaskill is not happy. She’s introduced a bill to strip tribes’ immunity in patent cases.
Curiously, McCaskill’s bill only strips Indian tribes of this protection, not the other beneficiary of sovereign immunity – public universities.
Why just tribes? McCaskill’s office released a statement that read, in part, “Congress never imagined tribes would allow themselves to be used by pharmaceutical companies to avoid challenges to patents, and this bill will shut the practice down before others follow suit.”
Notice the “allow themselves to be used” part? Is the tribe a bunch of children being exploited? Of course not. They’re making a healthy profit from basically found money. Who wouldn’t love to be “exploited” like that?
So McCaskill wants to strip Indian tribes of sovereign immunity to protect them from being “used” voluntarily and earning millions of dollars in the process, but not universities. Weird, right?
It’s not like the tribe couldn’t use the money. As Newsweek reports, they’re located near three Superfund sites – areas so polluted with hazardous material they’ll take years to clean up, if ever – along with countless other needs.
So why does Claire McCaskill hate Indians? Or is she simply a tool of generic drug makers, a group that would benefit if the patent were successfully challenged?
These are questions that would be asked by Democrats if a Republican attempted to do this, so why not when a Democrat does?
McCaskill is looking at a tough reelection fight next year and hasn’t really done much in the last six years, so she needs something. And she seems willing to screw over a poor Indian tribe to do it. These are Democrats’ rules, they should have to live by them too.
I’d rather keep Columbus.
Democrats, Indians, lawyers and drug companies.....
Where’s my popcorn?
I have a picture of my great grandfather my grandfather and my father on my mantle. It must have been taken in 1937 or 38. Nothing wrong with old italians :). I love Columbus Day and the parade and I will never refer to it as anything else but
Haven't these idiots ever read a history book?
The indigenous Indian tribes of North America were constantly involved in warfare with each other, raided other tribes, massacred their enemies, kidnapped and took slaves from other tribes for their use and pleasure, tortured other Indians and generally were not peaceful people.
So isn't the Left, complete with with a long history of unintended consequences of their bad decisions, just trading a European explorer for a group known to be more violent and murderous to celebrate?
That's tantamount to saying let's not support Che Guevara because he murdered thousands of people and throw our love and respect to Mao Tse Tung who murdered millions of his people.
Claire is a wealthy ‘nursing home’ queen... I would check the fine print to see what windfall she will personally pocket.. when she loses her next election.
You are right. They slaughtered other tribes,and among themselves at times, with a zeal and a gruesomeness reminiscent of Jenjis Kahn, though they lacked his tools.
I guess the Dhimmicraps got tired of harming black people.
Of course they love Che AND Mao ... so it’s not quite the same.
As for the rest, what non-whites do is not bad. Only white Christian (descended from Christians too) and European are inherently bad.
The Indians weren’t worse or better than any other bunch. But as Cultural Marxist they MUST be better for any not-we (for these idiots are more often than note white twits) because their function is not to endure, to be the folks to take charge, but to commit cultural suicide and then be purged by the real communist who will NOT put up with their crap!
And they are so well conditioned towards that end that they are gleefully and mindlessly stepping up to do the same for Islam’s benefit now that their old Soviet masters who were to benefit from their stupidity are no more.
Of course Islam triumphant would give the the chop even quicker than the Soviets would have....
I think we should stop and look at all the issues involved and try to separate them out.
1. Sovereign immunity for Indian tribes. Is this sensible? Just? I don’t have a dog in this race. I can see arguments for both sides. Americans and American Indians should ask themselves if this is truly beneficial to the Indians it supposedly protects or is it just a way to “keep them on the reservation” and enrich just a select few tribal leaders. Would some other arrangement protect the legacy of tribal lands and at the same time permit them to improve living conditions for a group that has a very high poverty/violence rate?
2. The war on pharma. Disclosure: I own stocks in several small biotech and I probably own big pharma stocks via mutual funds. I don’t think big pharma is without its faults just like most other big companies. I’m in favor of punishing them fully - no slaps on the wrist - when they betray the public trust and abuse their power. That said, there seems to be a war against pharma just like there is a war against the rich. The left/lawyers see money and to them it looks like a target. Kill pharma and you kill progress in medicine. As the article points out, companies take HUGE risks to develop new drugs. They should, IMO, be rewarded for those risks.
3. Loopholes. There is something wrong with the law when both the left and the right resort to loopholes to accomplish their goals. Either close the loopholes or kill the unpopular/unworkable/unjust laws that they are skirting. The idea that you can do whatever you want so long as you find a clever lawyer and a clever loophole is sneaky and underhanded and not the sort of society I prefer to live in.
I think all the ads for Restasis I have seen have women doctors and women patients. You would think that any problem affecting the eyes would affect both men and women, but the impression given by the ads is that the drug is addressing something that is only a problem for women.
Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill
What are the odds that a Democrat Senator will get a law out of committee let alone passed.
President Trump will never see such a law since the drug companies have spread enough money around to block it.
As someone else wrote here, it sounds like she may have a dog in this fight. Follow the money.
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