Pfizer prioritizes profit, reminiscent of a quote about relentless pleasure pursuit. Drug development has become difficult, leading to fraud, like a $2.3 billion settlement in 2009. Now, Pfizer focuses on vaccines to avoid liability and secure government funding. Their new initiative, PfizerForAll™, aims to simplify healthcare access in the U.S., indicating a shift towards functioning as a "healthcare provider."
Pfizer Launches PfizerForAll™ "Platform is designed for patients with migraine, COVID-19 or flu, and adults seeking vaccines for preventable diseases, including COVID-19..." Wed, 11 Sep 2024 10:12:06 GMT https://petermcculloughmd.substack.com/p/pfizer-launches-pfizerforall Pfizer’s passionate and dogged pursuit of profits reminds me of a funny quote I once read about a New York City playboy at the end of the 19th century.
He pursued pleasure so hard that he overtook it.
Whoever wrote this— and I think it may have been Ambrose Bierce—appears to have borrowed the phase from Soren Kierkegaard, who remarked:
Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it.
Over time it has become steadily harder to develop safe and effective molecules for treating diseases that are common enough to warrant the massive investment. As the opportunities for developing legitimate drugs have shrunk, Pfizer has chased profits through fraudulent schemes.
In 2009, the company agreed to pay $2.3 billion, the largest health care fraud settlement in the history of the Department of Justice, to resolve criminal and civil liability arising from the illegal promotion of certain pharmaceutical products.
Since then, the company has discovered that the most profitable substances are not pharmaceutical products, but vaccines for which the company bears no product liability and for which it can easily persuade the governments of the world to foot the bill.
Pfizer’s latest scheme is called PfizerForAll™—which appears to be a play on the phrase “With liberty and justice for all.” As the first paragraph of the company's recent press release describes the new program:
Pfizer Inc. (NYSE: PFE) today introduced PfizerForAll , a user-friendly digital platform designed to make access to healthcare and managing health and wellness more seamless for people across the U.S. The new, end-to-end experience will support the millions of Americans affected annually by common illnesses like migraine, COVID-19 or flu, and those seeking to protect themselves with adult vaccinations. By bringing together critical resources and services into a single destination, PfizerForAll helps individuals and their families cut down on the time and steps needed to take important health actions like getting care, filling prescriptions, and finding potential savings on Pfizer medicines.
And so, Pfizer appears to be moving beyond drug development to become a “healthcare provider” in its own right.
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