His name is Brent Saunders. He's a lawyer who made a fortune running drug companies while saying he didn't even want to try to discover drugs. Now he's lecturing Elon Musk on social responsibility.
Oh Alex, you've struck a nerve with me. I worked at Actavis in the legal department when the Forest Labs deal was consummated. I was also there while Brent and his buddies ran Actavis, and later Allergan, into the ground. You've got this man pegged to a tee.
His game is to move from company to company, loading himself and his cronies, who he always brings with him, with stock. He then seeks out a partner to buy the company at a premium so he and his buddies can cash out. He did it at Bausch, Forest and then Actavis/Allergan. He's looking to pull the same game at Bausch again, although he may have some trouble pulling it off this time.
All along the way, he does exactly what you say, cutting employees and funding for operations to make the company look good in the short term, boosting the stock price.
He is also a bald faced liar. I remember the whole Pfizer saga. He would get up on the podium during townhall meetings and swear up and down that he wasn't trying to have the company bought by Pfizer. And this was in answer to direct questions on the topic. We all knew what he was up to, because he also isn't very good at keeping secrets.
When Pfizer fell through he took to swearing up and down that he wasn't trying to sell the company's generics division, which he finally did as a prerequisite to the Abbvie transaction.
By the way, you forgot to mention his stunt of selling the company's patents on Restasis to an Indian Tribe to avoid a patent reexamination procedure using sovereign immunity. I know a little bit about that.
Yes. We live in a plutocracy where we're simply dispensable. He is merely one member of the new aristocracy that our Founders warned would feast on our bones.
We are ruled by robber barons who have taken bed with our government to assure both do each other's bidding at the expense of the sovereignty of We The People.
"Of all forms of tyranny the least attractive and the most vulgar is the tyranny of mere wealth, the tyranny of a plutocracy"
- Theodore Roosevelt
Remember when Democrats claimed they cared about that?
It's what has perhaps been a silver lining in this past plandemic in just how corrupt the Government-Pharma-Medical-Media cabal IS. Many here have probably known this is nothing new, and has been going on for decades and decades. Just astonishing how many AMERICANS still fall prey to the slick corrupt advertising where they are told to "ask their Doctor" The coddled, entitled and victim mindset of so many is appalling. Personal responsibility and independent critical thought for a life lived well is not rocket science, and yet Pharma continues to make HUGE $$$'s because they know how to manipulate the minds of sheep
Yeah Brogan you're 100% spot on. I would go as far to say most people have willingly turned their health over to those who see it as simply a commodity to be traded in dollars.
Part of many of the issues with American medicine is government involvement: from impacting the number of medical schools to interfering with the market to awful FDA behavior. But not discovering new drugs is equally atrocious.
I know this makes people eyes roll and yawn - but all our problems - from Internet Bubbles to Housing Bubbles to Bitcoin Bubbles to NFT bubbles to Pharma Bubbles - stem from the tax code. It's not that the crumbs fall, but you get to keep more of the crumbs if you do something that on the face of it doesn't make sense. Like move your "head-office" to an Ireland townhouse with 3 lawyers and cut your tax bill by half. Or buy a profitable company for $10B, load it up with $12B in debt, pay a crazy dividend, and then at 10 years, go bankrupt and lay off everyone without severance or pension. For Toys-R-Us, bankruptcy was more lucrative than a 0% bailout loan. Due to taxes.
You nailed it! It's the tax code. If politicians really wanted to tax the rich, they would change it so these companies can't skip taxes while remaining in the US.
I am a senior at 75 that pays a significant amount of taxes. I am still working and asked often if I am retired. I simply respond by saying I am not retired just tired. Any senior could be given an exemption card with a bar code or QR code based on their sworn income status just like tax exempt businesses are exempted today. Their latest income tax returns before implementation of the sales tax could also be used.
This is what happens when you have a tax code that is 70,000 pages and climbing. Why is it that voluminous? Simple, politicians were arming their war chests by giving tax breaks to whomever would give them cash. The answer, simplify the tax code, make the corporate tax rate competitive with the Ireland's of the world. But, good luck finding politicians willing to lose their cash cows by doing this.
This might, might slow down these CEO grifters who know they won't be there long, just long enough to get filthy rich. Screw everyone else.
I'm hoping enlightened writers/speakers will stop referring to "healthcare" in the US. What we have is disease care. We used to call it medical care, before the industry rebranded itself in the '70's or '80's.
We have what could be called "symptom care". Doctors never try to go after the root cause of illness, they just treat the symptoms with endless prescriptions, all at the behest of Pharma. Then so many of the meds create their own problems, so a person must take more meds to help the problems caused by the first meds. The illness is never cured because the cause is never addressed. Diabetes 2 is a good example of this.
Our health care system, f***ed up as it is is underwritten by the federal government, which pays most of the bills......about 55% of health care industry revenue can be traced back to federal funds, by far the largest chunks are Medicare and Medicaid, but there are dozens of programs.
As with the military industrial complex, the government doesn't look behind the curtain to see how the money is being spent. There is no oversight, no quality control, and state laws which at one time limited hospital's rights to open or close facilities, based on a public assessment of need, have almost all been repealed.
What is infuriating is the phony debate about "socialized medicine". We have socialized medicine, designed to benefit the Brent Saunders of the nation. Most people who do have insurance are hemmed in by restrictions on their choice of provider as a condition of the insurance, especially if its partially paid for by the employer. So the possibility of hospitals competing in an open market based on the quality of care they provide is, to be polite, extremely attenuated. Increasingly, regional health care markets are dominated by 2 or three providers, creating the possibility of industry cartels to foil public oversight or genuine competition, reminiscent of the US Big Three automakers deciding it was in their financial interest not to compete on anything real about their vehicles, e.g., price, performance, safety, fuel economy, until they were upended by imports that offered choices on those matters.
There's no accident here, just a long term campaign of the industry to establish bipartisan support for their gravy train, by channeling some of that generous government funding back into campaign support.
“ It’s not unusual for some elders to spend days lying on stretchers in Quebec ERs. …
Almost 14,000 Quebecers today have been languishing more than a year for their surgery. …”
Etc etc
Medicine seems so simple to do, but they’ve found ways to ruin it everywhere! Big government and big corporations equally. Maybe after civilization collapses we can return to human relationships on a human scale…
People thinking there's a quick fix for just about anything is part of the problem, too. We have given our power away of knowing how beautiful our bodies' healing capacities are. May there be a renaissance of sorts of trusting our innate ability to heal, of being empowered by that, and of pushing back big time against BigPharma and the overuse of medical procedures and pills.
Oh like adjusting lifestyles and intake to counter the accelerated aging/damage? There remains great benefit from naturopathic remedies like many have rediscovered. Stuff that’s been used for thousands of years and is largely safe, it just doesn’t make pharmaceutical companies rich.
It’s not just big pharma but the marriage of it to the federal government that really hurts us all.
They get everything they want and we pay for it in more ways than one.
As a 38-year 12 Stepper who has seen miracles of healing (and not), I give you a 4th Step Promise:
When the Spiritual Malady is overcome, we straighten out mentally and physically [and emotionally]. True.
I peddle God’s power - Whose grace activates the self-healing of which you speak. It’s free. Sometimes, if I’m really sneaky, I can get my guys to buy me a coffee.
So is this typical to have someone as a CEO who knows nothing about the research & development that goes into a drug, as the person is a lawyer or lawyer with an MBA? Just sell the product whatever it is and side effects be damn is the mantra it seems.
Every time I read of the massive graft occurring in this or that segment of the US economy, I realize there's a simple solution: End the ability of the central bank to create money from nothing. Since 2008, the Fed has printed $8 trillion from thin air. It's not just crumbs now. Entire loaves are being stolen via the runaway spending which the Fed finances. Stop it.
"The truth has no side effects." Alex, this is the best "Subscribe" button promo language yet. (And it is, fittingly, so very true -- unless freedom, stated by Jesus as the consequence of knowing the truth, counts as a side effect.)
I also want to add that it makes me more angry than I have words to express that our system incentivizes this kind of societally destructive behavior -- and that there is no shortage of people willing to take advantage.
Change the law that lets them register companies abroad while doing business in the US and skirting taxes. Where's AOC when you need her? These are the rich not paying their fair share.
I worked for a multinational when Section 936 of the tax code was still in effect that allowed U. S. companies to minimize U. S. taxes if they performed operations in Puerto Rico to the extent the operations added value to the product. My company was pretty damn conservative when if came to calculating the value added by our operations in Puerto Rico. However, companies like Microsoft and the Pharma companies were pigs at the trough. Microsoft's operations basically duplicated diskettes and packaged the diskettes in boxes with the necessary literature and the claimed value added was ridiculous. Big Pharma were even bigger pigs. You'd think that pressing pills or putting the ingredients in capsules and then packaging the product were the most important steps in the pill creation chain. Once 936 was phased out, they had to look for other havens and Ireland happened to be the next one in line.
Alex has also exposed the fraud that "Non-Profits" are. Just a way to funnel money. On the subject are the endowments and the deduction for 501-3c foundation like Gates. Just tax avoidance. Taxes are only for us 'little people".
Oh Alex, you've struck a nerve with me. I worked at Actavis in the legal department when the Forest Labs deal was consummated. I was also there while Brent and his buddies ran Actavis, and later Allergan, into the ground. You've got this man pegged to a tee.
His game is to move from company to company, loading himself and his cronies, who he always brings with him, with stock. He then seeks out a partner to buy the company at a premium so he and his buddies can cash out. He did it at Bausch, Forest and then Actavis/Allergan. He's looking to pull the same game at Bausch again, although he may have some trouble pulling it off this time.
All along the way, he does exactly what you say, cutting employees and funding for operations to make the company look good in the short term, boosting the stock price.
He is also a bald faced liar. I remember the whole Pfizer saga. He would get up on the podium during townhall meetings and swear up and down that he wasn't trying to have the company bought by Pfizer. And this was in answer to direct questions on the topic. We all knew what he was up to, because he also isn't very good at keeping secrets.
When Pfizer fell through he took to swearing up and down that he wasn't trying to sell the company's generics division, which he finally did as a prerequisite to the Abbvie transaction.
By the way, you forgot to mention his stunt of selling the company's patents on Restasis to an Indian Tribe to avoid a patent reexamination procedure using sovereign immunity. I know a little bit about that.
Overall, not a very nice person.
Can you email me? Would like to talk privately
Yes. We live in a plutocracy where we're simply dispensable. He is merely one member of the new aristocracy that our Founders warned would feast on our bones.
We are ruled by robber barons who have taken bed with our government to assure both do each other's bidding at the expense of the sovereignty of We The People.
"Of all forms of tyranny the least attractive and the most vulgar is the tyranny of mere wealth, the tyranny of a plutocracy"
- Theodore Roosevelt
Remember when Democrats claimed they cared about that?
"Remember when Democrats claimed they cared about that?"
They never cared. Never.
Interesting!
Its so hard to believe there is so much evil in people that they would trample over so many for thier own greed and gains.
It's what has perhaps been a silver lining in this past plandemic in just how corrupt the Government-Pharma-Medical-Media cabal IS. Many here have probably known this is nothing new, and has been going on for decades and decades. Just astonishing how many AMERICANS still fall prey to the slick corrupt advertising where they are told to "ask their Doctor" The coddled, entitled and victim mindset of so many is appalling. Personal responsibility and independent critical thought for a life lived well is not rocket science, and yet Pharma continues to make HUGE $$$'s because they know how to manipulate the minds of sheep
Yeah Brogan you're 100% spot on. I would go as far to say most people have willingly turned their health over to those who see it as simply a commodity to be traded in dollars.
Part of many of the issues with American medicine is government involvement: from impacting the number of medical schools to interfering with the market to awful FDA behavior. But not discovering new drugs is equally atrocious.
I know this makes people eyes roll and yawn - but all our problems - from Internet Bubbles to Housing Bubbles to Bitcoin Bubbles to NFT bubbles to Pharma Bubbles - stem from the tax code. It's not that the crumbs fall, but you get to keep more of the crumbs if you do something that on the face of it doesn't make sense. Like move your "head-office" to an Ireland townhouse with 3 lawyers and cut your tax bill by half. Or buy a profitable company for $10B, load it up with $12B in debt, pay a crazy dividend, and then at 10 years, go bankrupt and lay off everyone without severance or pension. For Toys-R-Us, bankruptcy was more lucrative than a 0% bailout loan. Due to taxes.
You nailed it! It's the tax code. If politicians really wanted to tax the rich, they would change it so these companies can't skip taxes while remaining in the US.
Federal sales tax anyone to replace our income tax fraud?
This would hurt seniors that no longer pay any income tax by additionally taxing their purchases?
I am a senior at 75 that pays a significant amount of taxes. I am still working and asked often if I am retired. I simply respond by saying I am not retired just tired. Any senior could be given an exemption card with a bar code or QR code based on their sworn income status just like tax exempt businesses are exempted today. Their latest income tax returns before implementation of the sales tax could also be used.
A flat tax drains the Swamp.
This is what happens when you have a tax code that is 70,000 pages and climbing. Why is it that voluminous? Simple, politicians were arming their war chests by giving tax breaks to whomever would give them cash. The answer, simplify the tax code, make the corporate tax rate competitive with the Ireland's of the world. But, good luck finding politicians willing to lose their cash cows by doing this.
This might, might slow down these CEO grifters who know they won't be there long, just long enough to get filthy rich. Screw everyone else.
Wouldn't a flat tax solve some a lot of these issues?
I'm hoping enlightened writers/speakers will stop referring to "healthcare" in the US. What we have is disease care. We used to call it medical care, before the industry rebranded itself in the '70's or '80's.
We have what could be called "symptom care". Doctors never try to go after the root cause of illness, they just treat the symptoms with endless prescriptions, all at the behest of Pharma. Then so many of the meds create their own problems, so a person must take more meds to help the problems caused by the first meds. The illness is never cured because the cause is never addressed. Diabetes 2 is a good example of this.
Exactly. Well said
Our health care system, f***ed up as it is is underwritten by the federal government, which pays most of the bills......about 55% of health care industry revenue can be traced back to federal funds, by far the largest chunks are Medicare and Medicaid, but there are dozens of programs.
As with the military industrial complex, the government doesn't look behind the curtain to see how the money is being spent. There is no oversight, no quality control, and state laws which at one time limited hospital's rights to open or close facilities, based on a public assessment of need, have almost all been repealed.
What is infuriating is the phony debate about "socialized medicine". We have socialized medicine, designed to benefit the Brent Saunders of the nation. Most people who do have insurance are hemmed in by restrictions on their choice of provider as a condition of the insurance, especially if its partially paid for by the employer. So the possibility of hospitals competing in an open market based on the quality of care they provide is, to be polite, extremely attenuated. Increasingly, regional health care markets are dominated by 2 or three providers, creating the possibility of industry cartels to foil public oversight or genuine competition, reminiscent of the US Big Three automakers deciding it was in their financial interest not to compete on anything real about their vehicles, e.g., price, performance, safety, fuel economy, until they were upended by imports that offered choices on those matters.
There's no accident here, just a long term campaign of the industry to establish bipartisan support for their gravy train, by channeling some of that generous government funding back into campaign support.
Spot on! I cant go to this doc, I can't get this RX filled at this pharmacy, the list goes on!
Meanwhile, in Canada:
https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/analysis-quebecs-health-care-system-now-worst-ever
“ It’s not unusual for some elders to spend days lying on stretchers in Quebec ERs. …
Almost 14,000 Quebecers today have been languishing more than a year for their surgery. …”
Etc etc
Medicine seems so simple to do, but they’ve found ways to ruin it everywhere! Big government and big corporations equally. Maybe after civilization collapses we can return to human relationships on a human scale…
People thinking there's a quick fix for just about anything is part of the problem, too. We have given our power away of knowing how beautiful our bodies' healing capacities are. May there be a renaissance of sorts of trusting our innate ability to heal, of being empowered by that, and of pushing back big time against BigPharma and the overuse of medical procedures and pills.
Oh like adjusting lifestyles and intake to counter the accelerated aging/damage? There remains great benefit from naturopathic remedies like many have rediscovered. Stuff that’s been used for thousands of years and is largely safe, it just doesn’t make pharmaceutical companies rich.
It’s not just big pharma but the marriage of it to the federal government that really hurts us all.
They get everything they want and we pay for it in more ways than one.
I would love to see this renaissance, but I fear that won’t happen any time soon.
As a 38-year 12 Stepper who has seen miracles of healing (and not), I give you a 4th Step Promise:
When the Spiritual Malady is overcome, we straighten out mentally and physically [and emotionally]. True.
I peddle God’s power - Whose grace activates the self-healing of which you speak. It’s free. Sometimes, if I’m really sneaky, I can get my guys to buy me a coffee.
So is this typical to have someone as a CEO who knows nothing about the research & development that goes into a drug, as the person is a lawyer or lawyer with an MBA? Just sell the product whatever it is and side effects be damn is the mantra it seems.
We lost millions from the Valeant stock disintegration. I hate this guy. You had me at Valeant.
Our system of “healthcare” is broken into a million pieces.
Every time I read of the massive graft occurring in this or that segment of the US economy, I realize there's a simple solution: End the ability of the central bank to create money from nothing. Since 2008, the Fed has printed $8 trillion from thin air. It's not just crumbs now. Entire loaves are being stolen via the runaway spending which the Fed finances. Stop it.
"The truth has no side effects." Alex, this is the best "Subscribe" button promo language yet. (And it is, fittingly, so very true -- unless freedom, stated by Jesus as the consequence of knowing the truth, counts as a side effect.)
I also want to add that it makes me more angry than I have words to express that our system incentivizes this kind of societally destructive behavior -- and that there is no shortage of people willing to take advantage.
Change the law that lets them register companies abroad while doing business in the US and skirting taxes. Where's AOC when you need her? These are the rich not paying their fair share.
I worked for a multinational when Section 936 of the tax code was still in effect that allowed U. S. companies to minimize U. S. taxes if they performed operations in Puerto Rico to the extent the operations added value to the product. My company was pretty damn conservative when if came to calculating the value added by our operations in Puerto Rico. However, companies like Microsoft and the Pharma companies were pigs at the trough. Microsoft's operations basically duplicated diskettes and packaged the diskettes in boxes with the necessary literature and the claimed value added was ridiculous. Big Pharma were even bigger pigs. You'd think that pressing pills or putting the ingredients in capsules and then packaging the product were the most important steps in the pill creation chain. Once 936 was phased out, they had to look for other havens and Ireland happened to be the next one in line.
Thanks Alex. I really appreciate your exposure of these pharma thugs.
Alex has also exposed the fraud that "Non-Profits" are. Just a way to funnel money. On the subject are the endowments and the deduction for 501-3c foundation like Gates. Just tax avoidance. Taxes are only for us 'little people".
And they despise us! Go figure..