God bless you, captains of industry

When last we left our precious pharmaceutical companies they were valiantly sacrificing $8 billion a year in profits in support of health care reform....in order to make $35 billion a year. *sniff* Always trying to help us out they are. But as if that noble "sacrifice" wasn't undermined enough my vast sums of money they stood to gain, we find out that their plan to help reduce drug costs had one catch: it was going to be preceded by a massive increase in drug costs.

Even as drug makers promise to support Washington’s health care overhaul by shaving $8 billion a year off the nation’s drug costs after the legislation takes effect, the industry has been raising its prices at the fastest rate in years.

In the last year, the industry has raised the wholesale prices of brand-name prescription drugs by about 9 percent, according to industry analysts. That will add more than $10 billion to the nation’s drug bill, which is on track to exceed $300 billion this year. By at least one analysis, it is the highest annual rate of inflation for drug prices since 1992.

The drug trend is distinctly at odds with the direction of the Consumer Price Index, which has fallen by 1.3 percent in the last year.

My God, it's like prices for medicine and medical care in America often bears no relation to actual market costs or conditions. I'm just so glad that this whole health care reform is working out for pharmaceutical companies. I was worried for a second there that they might have to get by with the meager billions in profits they get from those countries with *shudder* socialized medicine.

No, thankfully they still have a license to print money, thanks to the US and our inability to even attempt to address costs in a serious way and a political party that wanted one days worth of headlines saying pharmaceutical companies supported health reform and were going to cut costs, and didn't care that the pledge to cut costs was coached in the knowledge that the only type of reform our idiot government could pass would mean they'd get back 4 times what they pledged to cut. Oh and that cut would be further undermined by a price increase so large that their pledge to cut prices would still result in a net price increase. I think we should all be glad they didn't pledge to cut costs more, otherwise only the wealthiest sheiks in the world would be able to afford Lipitor.

So in case you were worried about the plight of the poor pharmaceutical mega-conglomerate; don't be. They figured out a way to fuck your wallet on the front and back ends. I'm sleeping easier knowing that. Isn't that what health reform is all about?