Tornado damages Pfizer plant, may cause “long-term shortages” of medicine
cbsnews.com
cbsnews.com
These companies, which are granted legal monopolies, have not safeguarded US interests.
In theory, capitalism is supposed to be a bunch of companies competing against each other to attract consumers. In reality, it often turns out to be a bunch of local governments competing against each other to attract a few BigCos.
By definition in formal economic theory, the free market is a bunch of companies competing against each other.
By definition in formal economic theory, fascism is government regulation of companies to promote political agendas.
All of these definitions get skurvy, elided and re-purposed for propaganda, but when talking about economics, correct and accurate usage is often helpful.
Still not clear how this is an appropriate topic for Hacker News for startups?
So if you aren't going to build anything high risk in North Carolina, skip Minnesota, Alaska, Nebraska, West Virginia, Missouri, Arkansas, Kansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, South Dakota, Mississippi, Montana, Alabama, Nevada, Colorado, Louisiana, Arizona, New York, New Mexico, Oregon, Florida, Washington, Oklahoma, California, and Texas as well.
The issue is that Always Late Inventory(tm) has made it such that there is zero resiliency and zero inventory in the system.
Consequently, a single event immediately puts you behind in such a way that it takes years to catch up. Because nobody can increase their production because everything is already tuned to be on the edge of their production capacity.
Every rule meant to guarantee redundant supplies raises costs, therefore it raises prices, therefore, it raises the number of people who can not afford their meds.
It's not just tornadoes that interfere with supplies of meds. Imagine the supply chain havoc a hot US-China war over Taiwan would cause. While most US meds are made in the US, they are usually made from foreign-made precursor chemicals.
The most obvious fix would be to allow people to keep 6 months of a med at home. The current limit is 3 months, though most cops believe it is 30 days. (Note: the same cops who say it is illegal to possess more than 30 days of meds pick up 90 day supplies at the pharmacy.) We should require that insurance companies cover the med at no increased copay or coinsurance (per dose) to allow patients to stock up to a 6 months supply (when there is no shortage of the medication.)
Enforcing laws against landlords and cops stealing people's meds would save many lives. I know of 3 people who died after landlords took their meds and one person who died after constables took her meds. I lost a lot of insulin when a cop stole all I had out of my fridge.
We can fix this.
MBAs at your company sweating because they can’t infinitely grow their revenue? Hire my company, who will create fake stories about an earthquake in a country no one has heard about and use that to justify increasing prices.
Pfizer just saw that increasing prizes because "shortages" is a good way to bust profits. And thanks to paying politicians there is no end in sight.