Pharmaceutical Monopoly

Millions of people take prescriptions that are more than what they need or are not what they need, period.
TV viewers must endure ads that sell them not only on drugs, but on diseases. Those types of ads are not allowed in non- ultra-capitalist countries.
We lazy Americans don’t even have to leave out armchairs to receive diabetic supplies and catheters . We have a choice of companies who will ship them for free, "remind us" when we need more (catheter users need reminding?!), and will bill Medicare directly.
A Google search of the very general term "biggest lobbyist" has two first-page hits with "pharmaceutical" or "health care" in the page excerpts.
"Pharmaceutical Monopoly" is one of my blog tags because more awareness needs to be made to this problem. The pharmaceutical companies are pursuing profits, not patient best interest. The health coverage plan sponsored by President Obama gutted provisions that might have interfered with those companies’ profits.
The best way to see drastic cuts to our endangered Medicare program would be to severely limit the reach of pharmaceutical companies.
It seems only one big corporation with a contradictory plan to the profit path can stand up to another. I can think of no other reason why Wal-Mart switched away from Eli Lilly and Company as the manufacturer of ReliOn insulin after only two years. As the big guy who brought down older favorites such as Ames and Caldor and local, smaller stores, and continues to be a serious threat to others such as K-Mart, Wal-Mart is the target of scorn. People want to root for the underdog and poke at the big dogs.
Wal-art does not threaten the economy and health the way pharmaceuticals do. The pharmaceuticals develop or discover drugs, then sometimes create syndromes or diseases to create a target audience. Their lobbying has decreased test time of new products that get pushed on the unwary doctors and patients then pulled a few years later when longer-term and often fatal side effects are discovered.
Thanks to the glut of Type 2’s, diabetics are seen as a lucrative growing market. The pharmaceuticals are the biggest donors to the American Diabetes Association and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and other organizations "for" diabetics.
Diabetics using the ReliOn insulin will need to watch themselves in the weeks and months following the change from Eli Lilly’s "Humulin" and Novo Nordisk’s "Novolin." There are differences in the insulin. I’ve been a user of Wal-Mart’s generics since the late 1990’s and it has worked fine for me. There has to be some difference in each brand and trade name of insulin to avoid violating existing patents and to protect new patents. There is much more of a stir about changing insulin with this change to Wal-Mart’s generic than there had been when Eli Lilly began manufacturing it in 2010. Don’t think that is not also to scare your dollars into Lilly’s pockets. Lilly would have you switch to their non-generic equivalent of the product they labeled for Wal-Mart because that is "safer" than switching brands and manufacturers. That is not true, but the change should be monitored with more than average attention.
In circling back to the interrupted topic of blood sugar testing, the manufacturers of the lancets and test strips free meters also have your best dollars in mind, not your best interests. Those free meters are akin to casinos that offer free drinks to people on the gambling floors. They don’t need to make anything off the meter because they’ll make their money off you from the testing supplies, even while they bury patents for equipment that could test your sugar without the need for lancets and chemical test strips.
The patient shouldn’t worry about neuropathy or other effects of the testing; they’re probably working on drugs for that now.