This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis.
Wars, natural disasters, public health crises – these are the moments when people need to be able to trust that their government is working well, working for them, and telling them the truth. But as the American people prepare for the threat of a coronavirus pandemic, the Trump administration has challenged that trust on a number of fronts. One immediate step that President Trump must take to restore that sacred trust is to fire Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Alex Azar and replace him with a public health expert that the American people can have faith in.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1294656
1 Like
Can we ditch Dotard and Q-TIP too?
11 Likes
Could we get rid of Mitch McConnell at the same time?
Without going into the irresponsibility of GOP Senators, who, unlike their House colleagues, are not discussing an $8.3 billion bill to get testing and other biosecurity measures up and operational, I’d just like to point out that I would not like to see the public health system here in California caught flat-footed as we have seen in northern Italy. Our local paper headline is “ Baby Yoda Toys Delayed Due to Outbreak ” as if this is a joke. No test kits. A system that will be overwhelmed with just a dozen serious cases (not even critical!). Unlike war powers, which allow the government to respond to an event that may last years, we can see that it is what happens now in the next few weeks that determines events over the next 12 months. At the moment, things are being here are being run about like the populist Five-Star party in Italy.
9 Likes
Let’s say that government scientists develop a vaccine but don’t want to profit off of it. Who better than Eli Lilly to step in and say: “as an experienced pharmaceutical company, we can show you how it is done!” Lilly makes a profit, the government scientists learn a lesson. Selfless, really.
3 Likes
Should keeping Big Pharma Interests out of Coronavirus be a starting point goal?
Yeah, they are greedy and needed to be monitored but they are also one of the two best placed groups (along with academia) in the entire world to solve the problem.
Capitalism mixed with a little socialism is the strongest tool developed by human beings, to date, to manage and (maybe) solve the problem.
Knee-jerk reactions like this is, plain and simple, cutting off your nose to spite your face. Nothing more.
You know who we have to keep out of our war fighting? The armed forces.
Silly.
2 Likes
This all very strange from a Finnish perspective. Finland, a small country, has been developing its public health system for many decades in ways that allow for ramping up to meet emerging challenges, whether natural disasters, war, or pandemic. Testing was up over a month ago and preparedness measures for properly equipped isolation wards and protection of staff moved ahead. Again the sentence that has to be visible on every public health website in the US is not here:
- Suomen sairaaloissa on hyvä valmius tutkia ja hoitaa koronavirusinfektioita eristysolosuhteissa. (Finnish hospitals are well prepared to study and treat coronavirus infections in isolation conditions.)
That is the gold standard. What will reveal itself over the coming weeks is just how far in breach the US medical system is (perhaps for structural reasons, but still no excuse) in falling below a reasonable standard of preparedness and capacity for an effective response.
9 Likes
One thing to remember in this “dump on big pharma” phase is the big companies have labs and gear us former and current academics dependent on grants can only dream about. My former lab ran on a budget of about $200,000/yr and that supported 4 grad students, me, and bought all our chemicals and other stuff. The companies have nearly unlimited resources by comparison and they can do the testing and development way faster than a government lab could.
12 Likes
WTF are you thinking?
You really want Trump to appoint someone honest???
5 Likes
House emergency coronavirus $8.3 billion funding bill looks set to pass unanimously. Ball is in Mitch’s court.
6 Likes
Big Pharma will find a way to insert itself, with or without Azar.
Scratch Trump’s quid and he’ll scratch their pro quo.
5 Likes
This was a great article on their greed with vaccines during the swine flu epidemic a few decades ago:
3 Likes
As I said elsewhere, the Corona virus outcome will be another example of:
“Privatize the gains, socialize the losses”…
You can sure that the private health care industry is salivating at the prospects of the possible price gouging and the “secular growth” story that Corona represents…
10 Likes
“… people need to be able to trust that their government is working well, working for them, and telling them the truth. But as the American people prepare for the threat of a coronavirus pandemic, the Trump administration has challenged that trust on a number of fronts.”
I think you misspelled “completely lost” and “all.”
5 Likes
… with Secretary Azar, we never know if he is working in the best interests of patients and public health, or if he’s focused on the needs, interests and profits of the pharmaceutical industry.
I don’t share your doubts.
2 Likes
The only time you really don’t want to meet a doctor is in the hospital, but if things get bad enough, you have to (even if only to get the prognosis for a loved one). Similarly, the one time you really don’t want to have to face Azar’s fetid incompetence is in the middle of a real crisis. Instead, we should have long been trying to make sure we never face this situation. Of course, if you think this shit-show is bad, and there are already a dozen dead Americans to back this up, wait until we have an emerging global financial crisis, and we find ourselves looking to Steve Mnuchin for guidance.
5 Likes
There was no epidemic. Fewer than 500 cases, one death.
GOP Senate already said the bill is dead if it includes price controls to prevent overcharging the government.
4 Likes
Yes, they did. They actually want to strip out the normal Federal Procurement Price Reasonableness language. It is really amazing to me, that those who say government should be run more like a business ignore that businesses do not throw money at something without an idea of getting some level of return on the investment.
4 Likes
