We live in a capitalist dystopia

Pale Rider

...and Hell followed with him.
Citizen
FB friend:
America is an object lesson in the dangers of allowing wealth inequality to grow unchecked. Eventually, the super-rich will decide to do away with democracy, because they believe they're better than everyone else, and that eventually leads to the belief that they should have more influence over elections than all those inferior poors.
 

The Doctor Who

Now With Sheffield Steel!
Citizen
On a slightly smaller scale capitalist nightmare note: At the beginning of September, Kroger in our district decided that, rather than providing sufficient resources to their pharmacy delivery services, they would outsource the deliveries to a company called Scriptdrop.

Who's Scriptdrop? Essentially, they're a middleman company who manages the orders we send out and passes them over to a courier service for the physical delivery.

What courier service?

Uber-*******-Eats.

That's right. Our patients are now trusting their life saving medications to ******* Uber.

Not that they or we were ever told this. We only found out after three different delivery people showed up on the first day of the new system and announced themselves as Uber drivers.

It gets better, though. Because Scriptdrop/Uber doesn't provide for delivering refrigerated medication or controlled substances. So no insulins or pain meds. Y'know, the two most common things people who can't leave their homes need.

They also won't take cash or check payments, requiring online payments and starting this Monday, the previously free service will start costing $6 a delivery.

So, to sum up, our district has replaced the delivery system with one that costs more, is less convenient, less reliable and shuts out nearly everyone who most desperately needs their medications delivered.

Thank ******* god I'm a proper technician these days, at least I still have a job at the pharmacy.
 

NovaSaber

Well-known member
Citizen
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Pale Rider

...and Hell followed with him.
Citizen
FB friend:
I've actually seen business journalists in Canada asking why we aren't making Elon Musks and Mark Zuckerbergs and Sam Bankman-Frieds like America does, as if that's a national failing on our part.

Funny how the same people who praise billionaires for "creating wealth" are able to turn around and call it a good outcome if Elon Musk ends up burning $44 billion while destroying Twitter and destroying thousands of jobs.

"Wealth creation", "job creation" ... these are lies. The Internet's proud defenders of the super-rich class don't actually care about such things. They will worship a billionaire regardless of whether he's creating jobs or destroying them. Their worship of the rich is just a modern-day version of the Divine Rights of Kings.

The super-rich are the modern kings, and according to Calvinist belief, that's because God ordained that it should be so. Therefore, all the misdeeds of the super-rich must also be the Will of God. Any words they use to describe what they believe are evasions and lies. Their true belief is an unvarnished worship of the Order Of Things.
 

NovaSaber

Well-known member
Citizen
Has the elusive "good billionaire" been found?

The Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drugs Company (MCCPDC) is a registered pharmaceutical wholesaler and purchases drugs directly from manufacturers, bypassing middlemen to lower the price of more than 100 medications, it said in a statement.

For example, the leukemia drug imatinib is priced at $47 a month on MCCPDC compared to the $9,657 retail price.

The online pharmacy’s prices for generics factor in a 15% margin on top of actual manufacturer prices and a $3 pharmacist fee, the statement said.
 

Pocket

jumbled pile of person
Citizen
Hang on. That implies that it's not the manufacturers who were responsible for the insane markups in the first place. That can't be right.
 

wonko the sane?

You may test that assumption at your convinience.
Citizen
It implies the manufacturers aren't responsible for the insane markups... OR, since we actually do know it's the manufacturers, it implies he's taking a massive loss on every pill to keep the price low.
 

The Mighty Mollusk

Scream all you like, 'cause we're all mad here
Citizen
The manufacturers mark it up, then the distributors add their markup, then the retailers add theirs. Capitalism stacks.
 

Pocket

jumbled pile of person
Citizen
Oh sure, but when there's a difference between $47 and $9657, it seems unbelievable that the manufacturers's markup isn't a huge part of that. Especially since the distributors and retailers are actually competing with each other and have an incentive to keep their margins small.
 

NovaSaber

Well-known member
Citizen
Apparently he's a fan of Ayn Rand and Dogecoin, so I'm a lot less inclined to trust that this isn't a scam.
 

Ungnome

Grand Empress of the Empire of One Square Foot.
Citizen
He has a few good views, doesn't make him a good billionaire, just a bit better than a lot of the others

A good billionaire probably won't stay a billionaire for long, after all.
 

Pocket

jumbled pile of person
Citizen
He sure as hell won't if he's actually taking as big a loss on this stuff as Wonko suggested. It'd have to be offsetting the combined profit margins of the entire pharmaceutical industry. Even in this economy, no one is that rich.

I was wondering out loud if this is also available through insurance—like if you have a cheap plan that wouldn't have covered the full price versions of the drugs—and I realized that might be the angle, actually. Maybe it's not. Maybe this is only for people who are willing, or required, to pay out of pocket and in practice there aren't very many such people left thanks to the ACA and everything. So even if he's taking a loss, it won't actually add up to much in the end, and in return he gets a huge PR boost that's probably good for whatever the hell business he actually makes his money from.
 

Wheelimus

Administrator
Staff member
Council of Elders
Citizen
He's not losing any money. Cost Plus is very upfront on charging cost plus 15%. It's just that they can buy in such bulk that they get great deals. Say what you want about the man but he's saving me $50 a month on my blood pressure med.
 

wonko the sane?

You may test that assumption at your convinience.
Citizen
Dude also might be actively using generic versions of drugs, which might mean he's shipping them in and/or purchasing from another country (like canada.).
 

Pale Rider

...and Hell followed with him.
Citizen
FB friend:
Everything you need to know about conservative attitudes toward worker rights, you can learn from realizing that they think the workforce is an army. They're the generals, and all their employees are the expendable soldiers who should shut up, stop complaining, and do their duty. Oh, and it's World War 1.
 


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