Dozens of outdoor workers die every year in the state of Florida due to the heat, but that fact didn’t stop lawmakers in the state from passing legislation that actually BANS mandatory water breaks for workers. Plus, not only do we have the highest prices in the world, but when you add in the fact that your tax dollars already paid for the drugs, you get a clear picture of how badly you’re being ripped off. 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: Dozens of outdoor workers die every year in the state of Florida due to heat. But the fact didn’t stop lawmakers in from passing legislation that actually bans mandatory water breaks for workers. I’ve got Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins with me to talk about this. Farron, you’re gonna have to take this story because I read it and I swear I’m not joking, I thought that this was Onion. I thought that this was some type of comedy story, some Onion story where they’re trying to say, has it really gotten that crazy? Talk about this.
Farron Cousins: Unfortunately, it really has gotten that crazy here in the state of Florida, because yeah, the state legislature, the state House, state Senate worked together and passed this legislation saying that we are going to ban any city, or locale, municipality, whatever it is, you cannot enact any law that says your outdoor workers have to have mandatory water and rest breaks, which means mandatory breaks in the state of Florida for these outdoor workers are officially illegal. You cannot mandate those breaks in the state.
Mike Papantonio: In other words, you would’ve counties that would say, look, you’ve got workers coming in and they’re picking citrus. They gotta have so much time because it’s 120 degrees in those fields or wherever it might be, picking strawberries, construction workers on top of houses, putting on roofs.
Farron Cousins: And it has to vary county by county, especially here in Florida, because we do have such wild weather, depending on where you are in the state, we’re very different.
Mike Papantonio: I really, I’m serious when I tell you that when I read this, I couldn’t make sense of it. That’s how bizarre this is to me. Can you make sense of it?
Farron Cousins: No. And that is what is confusing about it is what’s the motivation behind this?
Mike Papantonio: Texas did it.
Farron Cousins: I know and Texas is almost even worse than Florida in terms of working outdoors in the heat. The only thing I can come to the conclusion of is that this is a group of individuals who passed this bill that have never actually had to work outside in the state of Florida, other than maybe cutting their own grass every couple of weeks. They’re not people that have actually gone out and done the work. And to be honest, I think that is a big problem with politics in general, whether it’s local, state, federal level, is we need more people that have actually gone out there and worked manual labor jobs. We need people that understand what it’s like to struggle and can bring that experience to politics. Because if you’ve never experienced it, you can’t appreciate it and understand it. And that’s what’s happening.
Mike Papantonio: It’s bigger than that to me. It’s bigger than that to me, Farron. Who would say, I’m gonna put my name on this? I’m gonna vote for this? You understand, it’s that you’re saying you cannot take a break in 120 degree heat, working on top of a roof. You can’t have a special cooling break. Now, here’s the real problem. The real problem is that administration after administration has been telling OSHA, do something about this kind of thing. You can do it. If you’re OSHA, you can come up and this has been kicking around for what, three presidents, where three presidents have been saying if you don’t get OSHA to do their job, because now they’re owned by corporations, you know. I mean, corporations own OSHA. OSHA is useless. But they would at least say to these folks at OSHA, come up with some standards that you can enforce. Right now, there are no standards. So it allows these folks to write this kind of legislation. Right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And in their legislation, I will say that they do point out like, hey, we’re gonna defer, follow the federal regulations on this. But they added that knowing there’s no federal regulations on this. So they did kind of put that in there as kind of a cover yourself moment, like, we’re gonna let the federal government handle this. And then the federal government says, well, we asked them, they’ve done nothing.
Mike Papantonio: 34 people a year die just in Florida from heat strokes related to this kinda stuff. And even in light of that, they go forward with this legislation. I just, some stories. You’ve been doing this with me for 25 years and some stories I just can’t get my arms around. This is one of ’em. I just, there must be some more to this story that I’m missing. Is there?
Farron Cousins: Not that I’ve seen. Eventually we’ll probably see once the quarterly spending reports come out, we’ll see how much these corporations gave and to whom they gave it to. And that’ll tell us a lot.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. The only good news is it’s unconstitutional. The health, safety and welfare is gonna be a good argument on this case from the constitutional standpoint.
Mike Papantonio: Americans are getting ripped off when paying for their prescription drugs. Not only do we have the highest prices in the world, but when you add in the fact that your tax dollars already paid for the drug, that you had a clear picture of how bad you’re being ripped off when you understand those kinds of numbers. Look, let’s begin at the beginning. NIH pays for most all of this drug research. Okay. The companies like Pfizer and Merck, they come in and they get that free information from NIH that taxpayers have paid for. They come up with a new drug. The list is startling. We’ll put it up for everybody to see. But when you look at the list of drugs and what taxpayers paid through the NIH and other, colleges, universities, it’s startling. Pick it up.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. What we have here in the United States through the NIH and the money that they dole out is the National Institute of Health will typically say, okay, you’ve got a university group of professors that are working on a new diabetes drug. They’ve got all this research. They’ve done the papers. Let’s give them a big old grant so that they can start this and develop this drug. And then the researchers, the scientists, they do this. And then the pharmaceutical company comes in and says, hey, wow, you got a great thing here. Uh, we’re gonna buy this from you and your university. Your university’s gonna get a lot of money. We’re gonna hold the patent and we just have a couple fine tuning to do. We’ll spend $10 million on top of the hundred million you’ve spent, and we’re good to go. And they profit in the billions from it. But like you just said, we already paid for those drugs. My tax dollars, your tax dollars. We paid for that already.
Mike Papantonio: Let’s talk about the 10 drugs that are being reviewed, where the industry, the drug industry has gone apoplectic, 10 drugs. We’re only talking about 10 drugs. And in those 10 drugs, taxpayers spent of just those 10 drugs, taxpayers spent almost $12 billion, $12 billion, taxpayers paid to develop those drugs. And big pharma made 70 to $80 billion off of those drugs that taxpayers paid for. And then they, in there, they jacked up prices sometimes as high as 2000% on those same drugs that taxpayers paid for at NIH. Drug Company comes in, acquires the drug, costs taxpayers $12 billion, industry makes $70 billion. Nobody’s doing anything about it. Nobody. It’s just like, okay, no problem. And if you follow this story, Stelara, for example, the drug Stelara. Stelara, a dose of Stelara in the United States is.
Farron Cousins: Well, $16,000 in the US. Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: $16,000 a dose of Stelara. In the UK it’s $2,500. What? Talk about it.
Farron Cousins: It’s absurd. And you’ve pointed this out because you actually asked this in a deposition one time, you were over in Europe taking the deposition of a drug executive. And you asked him, well, just real quick, why are you charging only this small amount over here, and yet you charge 10 times as much in the US? And the response was, well, because we can.
Mike Papantonio: We can, it literally was, we do that because we can. And it seemed to be okay. Everybody said, oh, all right. Well, that’s just how we do business in the United States. But I think it’s important that people understand that. That they understand that this is what’s happening in the United States. We’ll put a list of these drugs, Stelara, Stelara medicine that cost taxpayers six point, almost seven, well, $6.5 billion. Enbrel, $2.6 billion for taxpayers. Entresto, $901 million cost. And that’s not even, there’s still no no give from the industry to say, well, we’ll give you good prices. No, they won’t give us good prices, you know.
Farron Cousins: And the reason we’re paying so much more is not just because they can, it’s because they have to recoup what they’re spending in advertising. Because they are spending billions and billions every year. I mean, if you watch primetime network TV.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, it’s disgusting.
Farron Cousins: And it’s the people happy, dancing. We’re taking this miracle pill and it’s all these horrible side effects coming across too. But look at how happy we are.
Mike Papantonio: We are so happy.
Farron Cousins: And they’re distracting you while they read the side effects.
Mike Papantonio: This drug, yes, it killed 150 people from heart failure. But we’re so happy about it. This drug, well, it shut down people’s liver. These are actually cases we’ve handled. Shut down people’s liver, a thousand people. But we’re so happy about it. These same people are advertising on television, acting like everything’s okay because we let ’em do it. New Zealand is the only other place in the world that allows that kind of advertising, by the way.
Suspicious Activity: That it had helped dirty money flow through its branches around the world, including at least 800. Plaintiffs allege that the defendants provided money and medical goods to terrorist groups, Hezbollah and Jaysh al-Adl. This is a well organized business for these individuals that carry out these attacks. Terrorism is a business and they run it like a business. They knew about what was going on for a decade. They absolutely, absolutely no question about it knew that HSBC was washing money. They had every reason to understand it was for terrorism and it was for drug cartels. Took no action whatsoever.
These banks are involved, their accounts are connected, and they’re using them to mask the transactions. The more complicated they can make the transactions, the more distance they could put between the bad guys and a seemingly legitimate purpose of these funds. They pay $1.9 billion, which is a drop in the bucket compared to what they’ve made. And nobody goes to prison. These CEOs, these bankers that made this decision, they’re safe at home. They know what they’ve done. They know it’s resulted in the death of Americans, contractors and soldiers, not just hundreds but thousands. And we look the other way because they don’t look like criminals. The die cast, the people that are responsible for it, are on Wall Street. And they don’t look like criminals. It’s almost a suspension of disbelief. Sometimes I’ll have people call me and say, is this, is this real? Do they really get away with this? Yeah, they do.
