Katrina Vanden Heuvel writes:
Something is wrong with this picture: Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer made nearly $15 billion last year. It recently gave a $180 million payout to former CEO Hank McKinnell. But in the last two months the company has announced it will lay off 10,000 workers in manufacturing, research and sales.
"Incremental change is not enough," new CEO Jeffrey Kindler told The New York Times.
"Fundamental change is imperative, and it must happen now." And so the Brooklyn plant where Pfizer was born will be closed — 600 jobs gone. Research sites in Michigan will be closed — 2,400 jobs gone. Twenty percent of American sales positions — 2,200 jobs.
But if I were a betting woman — and I am — I'd bet "fundamental change" won't touch the lobbying operation which is dedicated to preventing fundamental change to the untenable way we do health care in America.
According to the Centre for Responsive Politics, in 2005 there were 2,326 registered pharmaceutical lobbyists. That amounts to 4.3 lobbyists for every member of Congress, and the drug companies spent $146,783,853 on their efforts.
And the Center for Public Integrity reports that between 1998 and 2005, the industry spent over $675 million on federal lobbying — with the top twenty corporations and trade groups accounting for 70 percent of that spending.
Throw in another $133 million in federal and state campaign contributions during that time period (nearly 69 percent went to Republicans) and some key jobs offered to members and their staffs, and it's easy to see how Big Pharma gets such a stellar return on its lobbying investment (i.e. tens of billions of dollars in additional profits; a ban on the reimportation of cheaper drugs from Canada; and barring Medicare from negotiating bulk drug prices for seniors.)
This is great news for them, and god-awful news for the rest of us who'd like to see a sane drug policy… and the Pfizer workers in Brooklyn, Michigan, and Omaha who might like a stake in the wealth they helped to create rather than becoming just another statistic in another round of brutal layoffs.
Much more here.
2 comments:
"Twenty Percent" of their Sales Force? That is Pfizer "propaganda"
and you keep repeating it. Pfizer has eliminated more than 50% of their US sales force in the last sixteen months! They have targeted their older workers. They refuse to answer any questions in the media regarding the actual numbers.
They severed more than twenty percent in December alone.
Any evidence to back up what you are saying?
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