Merry Christmas, Mr Shkreli

I’m having a real problem hating Martin Shkreli.

You probably know about Mr. Shkreli. He is the 32-year-old Wunderkind and hedge fund manager who cornered the market on Daraprim, a medication that  among other uses, is a treatment for AIDS patients  with  toxoplasmosis. His pharmaceutical company became  the world supplier for Daraprim, and raised the medication to  $750 a pill, triggering worldwide outrage and a series of sarcastic op Ed pieces. These pieces all ran along the lines of ” Now that he needs a lawyer, let's charge him $ 10,000 an hour for legal help.”

         Ah Gail Collins, you cut up, you.

 Why the anger?  Could it have stemmed from the Uber self-indulgent you tube videos of him in his Manhattan apartment, blathering on about life as seen through the eyes of a drunk 32 year old Plutocrat?

Is our scorn  based on the concept of cornering the market in a precious commodity?

         American history is filled with those who have done so with  varying degrees of   success and/or fame.  Jay Gould cornered the gold market a century ago.  The Hunt brothers did the same in the 1970s in the silver market.

In any event, we glorify those  scoundrels who have the knowledge and intestinal fortitude to corner commodity markets.

From Ohio Mister Thorne

Calls me up from night 'til morn,

Mister Thorne once cornered corn and that ain't hay.

Aha!

But I'm always true to you, darlin', in my fashion,

Yes, I'm always true to you, darlin', in my way.

--Kiss me  Kate ( as if you didn’t know)

 I’m terrified when scarce drugs suddenly become unavailable for  obvious reasons. I occasionally lose my bottle of  Rapamune, a  GVHD suppression drug,  and I have a buy a few to tide me over. They’re $50 a pill because only one company makes then… well,  they’ve gone generic, so  Sirolimus is somewhat cheaper.  I understand the terror of develping toxoplasmosis, an insidious  parasite that  grows in the brains of the immunocompromised.  Daraprim is the accepted treatment and  now unavailable Fortunately, as is almost always the case,  substitutes exist, so when I develop toxoplasmosis from cleaning the cat litter, I can  probably get by with Bactrim.

Mr. S isn’t alone charging outrageous fees for medications. Amoxicillin costs 2.5 cents a pill  to make.  CVS sells 20  Amoxicillin for $ 48.50,  or  about 2.40 a pill, a mark up of 1000%. Daraprim sold for  17 dollars before Mr. S bought the company he charged $750 a pill, about  1/ 2 of the CVS mark up. I don’t see any of us protesting CVS, although we should for so,so many reasons.

But this case deeply troubles me because I feel we ( that is me, and  you, dear reader, who I hope has a soul, a sense of justice and right versus wrong)  are partially responsible for this sad  situation.

First off,   Amorality doesn’t  evolve in a vacuum. No one sat Martin down as a child and said,

“Martin dear, just because something is LEGAL doesn’t mean it is MORAL and you  should do this. “

Did the guy ever go to church or Synagogue? (I’m afraid to look up which)  Didn’t his parents  ever read  little Martin he teachings of Robert Fulgrum whose  cliché ridden  “What I leaned in kindergarten” should  be taught  at Business schools across the country  because his  preaching, although treacley, is sound.

I believe  Baruch College ,where  Mr. Shkreli   leaned his moral compass, should have  told him:

1. Share everything.

2. Play fair.

3. Don't hit people.

4. Put things back where you found them.

5. CLEAN UP YOUR OWN MESS.

6. Don't take things that aren't yours.

7. Say you're SORRY when you HURT somebody.

         And then  Mr. Trump hits the national stage. He is a creation of the times in which we live.  He is a hero to  multitudes  even though he is the sort of  person the devil assigns to you  in the next world to pay for a life of  greed,  selfishness and close-mindedness.

Trump is an idol, even though his  high rise on central park south (Legally) blocks out the light for several buildings that   once fronted the  park. This wasn’t so bad, I guess until Mr. T  hung a sign that said “ Go Fuck yourself , don’t you wish you lived here?” ( I paraphrase, but that’s really what it said) and made sure it faced the blotted -out building behind his. The man has  infringed on more air rights than a Sicilian  at a  cocktail party ( is this racist? They tend to be close talkers, as a people.)

 The second reason we have to give  Mr. Shkreli a pass is that he was doing what he was trained to do : Find a vulnerable market and exploit it.  I suspect all first year Harvard Business school students are taught a course  titled  “ Exploring  and capitalizing  under -utilized markets” but should probably be called ,“screwing  the poor and ill for fun and profit  ”

 The metaphorical  blood is on our hypothetical hands because we have allowed  big business to control our health care system

Properly done, heath care is a money-losing proposition. Hartford Hospital (  losing  30 million this year)  has a full trauma operating room running 24 hours a day. If your car is  T boned on  Interstate 91 at 3 AM,  rest assured  a capable  vascular surgeon will be available to  sew you up. An OR costs about 2,000  dollars an hour to run even if no surgery actually done,  and someone have to pay that bill.

         We are at fault because we haven’t demanded a single payer  system  for health care for everyone . The thought of veterans dying in the snow because they didn’t have health care is so repugnant to us that we have built an entire VA system that insures this won’t happen.  If  you served your country we won’t let you die in some  hospital parking lot after being  T Boned on the Highway. We wont let a veteran die of Toxoplasmosis  either, for that matter, if we can help it.

         This whole sorry  Shkreli affair could not  happen outside the US, where  the government tightly controls health care.

If  Britain needs more Daraprim, they’ll pay  someone to make more. The Republican Party, home of Mr. T,  insists  people take responsibility for their own healthcare. Everyone has a duty to make sure he or she is covered ,or suffer the consequences It’s  all fun and games until a non veteran  lacking health insurance gets T Boned on Interstate 91 at 3 AM and is brought to Hartford hospital.

         “You don’t have insurance?  You’re not a Veteran? Hm,.. you better go bleed to death in the parking lot.”

That’s not going to happen.

So much of what’s wrong in this country is a result of our own  inability  to protest evil when we see it. I think of the late great Phil Ochs’  “A small circle of friends”

Oh, look outside the window

There's a woman being grabbed

They've dragged her to the bushes

And now she's being stabbed

Maybe we should call the cops

And try to stop the pain

But Monopoly is so much fun

I'd hate to blow the game

And I'm sure

It wouldn't interest anybody

Outside of a small circle of friends

Ridin' down the highway

I don’t have to add that  Phil killed himself a few years back.

What about those poor German civilians   who watched in horror as the  Russian army invaded  Berlin?  What about the atrocities visited upon the women ( as another aside read “All the light we cannot see” for a horrific depiction  of that  small holocaust)

         The German civilians must have cried out as the  Russians tortured them  at the end of World War II, “Its not us! Hitler wasn’t our idea! We are innocent.”

What’s our excuse for watching so much brutality and  cruelty  evolve in our country?  Why don’t we protest the gun lobby and the  private health care industry? Why don’t we really, really care when AIDS patients  can’t afford their medication? We don’t care until  tragedy befalls us.    Jim Brady didn’t give a whit about gun control, until John Hinckley tried to blow his head off. Too little too late, Jim?

I fear my life is spent

No one is innocent

         --urinetown  ( it’s on i tunes, , I guess)

Martin  Shkreli sprang from our loins. He capitalized on a weakness in the system,   exploited the poor and ill in a way that  should make his  business professors  proud and the rest of us a little  unnerved

You taught me to talk

And the benefit is

I know how to curse

---Calliban from the Tempest