State Attorneys General are accusing the popular app TikTok of mis-labeling and misrepresenting the safety of their own app in order to get around laws designed to protect children from harmful content. Plus, we’re only a few weeks into the New Year, but drug companies aren’t wasting any time raising their prices. So far in 2024, close to 800 different drugs have had their prices raised, and more price increases are planned for later this year. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: State Attorneys General are accusing the popular app TikTok of mislabeling and misrepresenting the safety of their own app in order to get around laws designed to protect children from harmful content. Now they’re getting sued. I’ve got a Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins with me to talk about it. I think this is, as I read this, it’s gonna be a stretch. I think it’s gonna be a stretch. Unless there’s specific, well, they’ve got some specific consumer fraud acts, laws there in the state. Maybe they can rely on that. But, you know, TikTok’s no worse than any rest of ’em, man.
Farron Cousins: Well, that’s what’s so interesting to me about this lawsuit because you got the Iowa Attorney General and they came out and said, listen, TikTok says that it is suitable, the content on there is suitable for children 12 years of age and up. The Attorney General comes out and says, well, not so fast. There is nudity, there is drug use, there is profanity, all of these things that otherwise, if it were in a movie or a TV show or in music, this would be regulated and you would have to say that, no, it’s not appropriate for age group. Same thing with video games.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: So TikTok has nobody looking over their shoulder. And I think that’s the problem. This lawsuit might be able to address that. I don’t think they’re gonna get any actual damages.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah, it’s gonna be a supervision kind of argument. I’m not, okay, but really, what about Google and the people that ultimately are the top of the food chain, don’t they have responsibility here? If this is really a lawsuit. I mean, this, women dancing provocatively, thong bikinis, butt and crotch shots, I mean, a kid can turn that on anywhere. But your point is that they’ve represented, they made this affirmative representation. No, this doesn’t happen with us. Everything is age appropriate. Talk about marijuana, hallucinogenics, all this stuff that a child can look at. And as I look at it, the only thing that you can really hang that on is their consumer act in that state and the representation. But talk about, to me, the Google factor is a big factor here, isn’t it?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. Because you have both Apple and Google that run their respective app stores the two biggest in the country. And what they do is they say, okay, you’ve got an app. Wonderful. Why don’t you tell us who this is suitable for? We’ll take your word for it. Slap it on there so parents can see, oh, this is 12 and up, you’re 12 and up. Here you go. But the responsibility to me doesn’t necessarily fall on TikTok. It goes back up to the top. It should be Apple and Google that are the ones trying to be held accountable here.
Mike Papantonio: And they’re not going to because it’s money. I mean, they’re not gonna, no, TikTok, you can’t come here. It’s all about money. So this case probably isn’t gonna go anywhere unless there’s some, I can see it maybe settling with some kind of mild kind of agreement between the AG and the state, but I’m just not seeing this as a real case.
Farron Cousins: No. And it almost seems like it’s a confusion of some of the legitimate cases that are out there against TikTok and other social media companies.
Mike Papantonio: The stuff that’s protected by 230.
Farron Cousins: Right. Iowa says, hey, let’s get in on this. And then they just miss the field goal on it. And it is what it’s.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. I think kids can find most of this stuff that they’re complaining about, about anywhere.
Mike Papantonio: We’re only a few weeks into the new year, but drug companies aren’t wasting any time raising their prices. So far in 2024, close to 800 different drugs have had their prices raised and more price increases are planned for later this year. All right, wow. Okay. First of all, what are the drugs that they’re raising prices on? Okay. Trikafta, for example. Okay. Is it Trikafta? Yeah, Trikafta. It’s a cystic fibrosis drug. Okay. It costs $26,000, $26,000 for a 28 day supply. You’ve got Fasenra. Fasenra is a drug that has to do with asthma, kids suffering from asthma. It’s $5,000 a month just to have it, to have access to it. Look, I’m so tired of hearing these drug companies, this is, oh, well, it’s research and development. BS. This is not research and development issues. This is, they’re spending money advertising. If you turn on television, every three minutes there’s a drug advertisement. So that’s where the money is being spent. But I see Congress, oh, we had a great victory this year. We controlled 10, the price of 10 drugs. Let’s talk, pick it up there.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. Look, we sit here like clockwork every January, and we do this story every single year and we have for about seven years now that we’ve been doing this show, talking about the latest drugs that these pharmaceutical companies raise the prices on, because they do it like clockwork. You can schedule your watch to it. They raise the prices every single January. Now, what most people don’t pay attention to is that they do it again in June or July. They make the big headlines in January for about a day and a half. Everybody forgets about it. They’re gonna do it again middle of the year. They do it every year. You and I have been following this long enough. We see the patterns emerge here. But, and people may think, okay, well look at some of these prices. They’re only raising ’em 4% here, maybe 6%, some of them 10%. But when you do that every single year, that four to eight to 16, we are talking about in the span of less than a decade, the prices of these drugs will be a hundred percent more than what they are today. Because they can get away with it and nobody’s stopping ’em.
Mike Papantonio: This year it’s 10%. Okay. It’s usually 6%, 5%, this year it’s 10%. They’re just going for it. And we don’t, US government don’t, here’s their argument. Well, it’s okay because insurance pays it. Well, really? That’s the whole problem with the healthcare system. Insurance, well, let’s just pass it on to the insurance company. They’re gonna pay it. And with PBMs, we’ve talked about before, there is no way to control this. PBM is, it’s just almost like mobsters moving into the pharmaceutical industry. That’s what a PBM is. It is absolute mobster quality kind of work. And we’ve got several cases pending against PBMs right now. Most people don’t even know what a PBM is. Talk about that a little bit.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. The pharmacy benefit manager, and we’ve discussed it recently, and what they do is they kind of act as the middle person between the pharmacies and the insurance companies as well as the drug companies. But what most people don’t understand is that these people get a cut. You know, whatever we can increase the price for the consumer, I’m gonna get a kickback. I’m gonna get these rebates, I’m gonna get more money. So if I raise your prices. And they’re also bullies. So not only do they have a hand in the price gouging, they also go to the insurance companies and say, listen, you have to cover this drug and you cannot cover this drug. If you do this, bad things will happen. If you do not play ball with us here, bad things are gonna happen. So they’re just, it’s one of those things I can’t imagine going home at the end of the night, like you talk about with the defense lawyers and saying, oh, wow, you’re not gonna believe it. I made these poor people, now they can’t get their cancer drugs.
Mike Papantonio: I doubt more than 5% of people watching this right now even know what A PBM is. There’s no reason they should. But it’s this hidden little deal that was created at first to, let’s have something to watch over the drug industry to where it’s controlled. Then the drug industry captures the PBMs. And it’s all, they call it rebates. It’s payoffs. If you put my drug on the formulary list, I’m going to pay you off. That’s what it is. It’s as simple, matter of fact, I’m writing a book about it. It’s a fiction book. It’ll be out next January. But it’s about, and the whole theme of the book is there’s an Irish mob coming in to take over the PBM business and all they’re saying, well, all we’re doing is displacing Wall Street. Because that is absolutely the truth. It is a corrupt system that we’ve let stand now for decades, and nobody will do anything about it. Most people have no clue why this happens. Why are these drug prices able to go up like this? And part of it is that the PBMs are involved in it, aren’t they?
Farron Cousins: Yep.
