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On June 22, 2011 The Supreme Court gave the pharmaceutical industry a pair of victories, shielding the makers of generic drugs from most lawsuits by injured patients and declaring that drug makers have a free-speech right to buy private prescription records to boost their sales pitches to doctors.
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Lucky for us, Federal law requires the makers of brand name drugs to label their products with FDA-approved warning information and to update the warnings when reports of new problems arise.Now the Supreme Court decides that makers of generic brands don’t have to. That doesn’t sound so bad until you consider that 75% of the prescriptions written in this country are for
generic versions of brand-name drugs. So warnings about the possible dangers of their products are something the drug companies don’t have to share yet at the same time the same court decides that the same drug companies can pass around your personal information to whomever they wish for marketing purposes. We’ll I guess they figure that the time you save not reading drug warnings can better be used reading unsolicited ads. O.K., score one for Big Business. I’m sure the Supreme Court also rules in favor of the little guy sometimes. Right? Let’s take a look at some recent decisions.
Just two days earlier they blocked a massive sex discrimination lawsuit against Walmart on behalf of female employees in a decision that makes it harder to mount large-scale bias claims against the nation’s biggest companies. Alright, 0 for 2, so it was a bad week for the little guys and (especially) gals. Let’s be fair, two cases in a week doesn’t necessarily make a pattern. Maybe the Supremes are just in a big business kind of mood. Let’s go back a little earlier in the year.
I see that on February 22, 2011 the Supreme Court ruled to Federal protect pharmaceutical companies from lawsuits by parents who claim that vaccines harmed their children. Well, we all know parents can sometimes get a little oversensitive when their children die from an FDA approved vaccine. And after all, it’s not the pharmaceutical companies fault that those kids didn’t react well to their product.
The Supreme Court justices are there for life (talk about job security). They are appointed by our elected Presidents and confirmed by our elected Congress. These conservative Supremes are the people who in 2009 ruled that Large corporations can spend unlimited amounts for political campaigns. Diana Ross’ Supremes could have made a better ruling. So in a nutshell, Big Business spends billions to elect officials who appoint judges who rule in favor of … guess who … that’s right …Big Business.