I don’t know what started it… but we were coming back from our Connection Group meeting from church when we started talking about how expensive insurance is even for us Americans and how you can’t get good medical care these days.
That started a rather passionate and heated talks between Soojin and myself about that. And then it reminded me of how pharmaceutical companies are greedy b*****ds for taking only money. You see, while in Ethiopia, and through the book, There is No Me Without You, I discovered and came to realization how greedy and injust these pharmaceutical companies are! Medication to treat AIDS/HIV has been around since late ’90s yet the company that developed it did not want to let go of its patent(s) and so generic medications couldn’t be made by a 3rd company. This meant that the price of medication was even too expensive for middle income families of America, let alone the poor $1-per-day income families of Africa! I was so furious and mad that it brought back that sheer anger and madness at such injustice!
We met an infant at Haregewoin’s orhpanage who looked so much better thanks to the generic medication that is now finally available. You see, the patent expired few years ago (finaly-freakin’-ly) and now it costs orders of magnitude less!!
Erg… if you know who these pharmaceutical compan(ies) are, let me know… I want to do something… at the least, to make people aware of these selfish injustice around the world. To put more value on money over people is not just injust, but inhumane. I am still mad thinking about it….