Keeping Sick People Alive

Corrupt influence over politicians operates with insidious incentives to engineer a model of sick care instead of genuine health care, writes Tristen Justice in the Federalist.

Criticism of “Big Pharma” isn’t a denial of the miracles of modern medicine that help keep us alive longer and, in some ways, healthier than ever before. Rather it is an indictment of the industry’s exercising corrupt influence over politicians while operating with insidious incentives to engineer a model of sick care instead of genuine health care.

According to Statnews.com 72 senators and 302 members of the House of Representatives cashed a check from the pharmaceutical industry ahead of the 2020 election.

(That represents) more than two-thirds of Congress, according to a new STAT analysis of records for the full election cycle.

Pfizer’s political action committee alone contributed to 228 lawmakers. Amgen’s PAC donated to 218, meaning that each company helped to fund the campaigns of nearly half the lawmakers on Capitol Hill. Overall, the sector donated $14 million.

Last fall, Dartmouth College Professor Susan Roberts told CNBC that Americans can now expect to spend roughly 10 years coping with myriad chronic diseases such as diabetes, cancer, and dementia — a period that is twice as long as the duration expected in the 1960s. Roberts blames the “widening gap” between life and health span on the medical industry’s success in “keeping sick people alive” without solving their underlying problems.

An Epidemic of Chronic Ills

In other words, Americans are suffering an unprecedented epidemic of chronic illness as conditions managed by a pill for every ill continue to pile up.

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), 90 percent of all health care spending in the United States goes toward dealing with chronic disease and mental health issues. Six in 10 Americans suffer from at least one chronic illness, while 4 in 10 suffer two or more. More than 40 percent of adults 20 and older, meanwhile, are clinically obese, which amplifies the risk of nearly every chronic illness and at least 13 different cancers.

But is Novo Nordiskreally interested in solving obesity as an underlying issue? According to the NYT (2023), Novo Nordisk, the Danish manufacturer of name-brand GLP-1 agonists Wegovy and Ozempic made so much money from its supposed wonder drugs that the company is “Reshaping Denmark’s Economy.”

Hardly. As outlined in Justice’s new book, Fat and Unhappy, the Danish company is a lead sponsor of a group determined to “break the stigma of obesity.”

The Obesity Action Coalition (OAC) was launched in 2005 “with the goal that this organization could create needed change for those who are living with and/or are affected by the disease of obesity.” Today, the group operates with 85,000 members, some of whom pay small dues, in addition to receiving funding from a cadre of pharmaceutical giants including Novo Nordisk, Boehringer Ingelheim, and Eli Lilly.

The “action” demanded by the OAC includes the “elimination of weight bias in our society and laws” based on the “belief” that obesity is a matter of “disease” out of individuals’ control rather than one of personal responsibility.