Peter Rost, Former Vice President of Pfizer, has a few things to say about the pharmaceutical industry and what it is doing to health care in this country. This is a speech he gave recently as the keynote speaker for the Prescription Access Litigation Project.

As many of you may know I worked at Pfizer as a Vice President until December 2005.

I’ve been very fortunate and I have done well in this industry; I’ve been
trusted to manage both a major region overseas as well as a $600 million
global business franchise. And I’ve been well compensated for my work. I’ve
never been unemployed and I’ve never had trouble buying drugs or providing healthcare for my family. Until now.

A month ago, Pfizer terminated my employment. They waited until I was
outside the country, and then called the press and told them that they had
fired me. They didn’t even try to contact me where I was. They simply drove
by my house and taped my termination letter to my front door. Fortunately
the New York Times and a few other newspapers called me and told me what they’d done, so eventually even I learned about my unemployment.

Pfizer told the press a lot of different things, many of them incorrect.
Among other things, they said I’d get a nice severance package. Reality, of
course, is very different. Pfizer has not paid me a penny in severance and I
have no other compensation from them. Instead for the first time in my life
I am eligible for unemployment benefits and I’m entitled to collect a
maximum benefit of $13,078 over a six month period, then it goes down to
zero.[1] So suddenly I am in the same situation as countless other
Americans. The U.S. Department of Labor claims we have an unemployment rate of 4.9%.[2] According to “the Economist,� however, the true unemployment rate in the U.S. is over 8%, or 12.6 million Americans.[3] The difference is due to the fact that the U.S. Government doesn’t count people as unemployed after six months without a job.[4] I’ve also learned that if my unemployment benefit is all the money I make this year, my family of four would actually fall below the income level the federal government defines as poverty.[5]

I’m also uninsured for the first time in my life and I have to pay full
price for drugs I used to get for free, just like over 40 million other
uninsured Americans.[6] I have to admit that when I started fighting for
cheaper drugs for the uninsured I never expected to become part of that
group myself. Contrary to many others, however, I do have a choice. In
accordance with federal COBRA law, Pfizer has offered me the opportunity to
continue my health care coverage for 18 months. The cost of doing that,
straight out of my own pocket would be $15,269 per year.[7] That’s a
shocking amount of money for simple insurance. You know, there used to be a time when insurance meant paying a small amount of money to avoid a big cost later on. But $15,269—how many people can afford to pay that? And even if they can—who’d want to pay that amount?

Ladies and gentlemen. The system we have today isn’t just broke. The system is utterly and completely sick and our weakest citizens are paying the price, every day. And here I get to the important point. I can’t talk about what’s wrong with the drug companies without also talking about what’s wrong with our current system. It’s a system that quite frankly is built on greed.

You know the definition of greed? Greed is an excessive desire to acquire or possess more than someone needs or deserves.[8] Greed is not a corporate executive who builds an organization such as Microsoft and happens to get rich. Greed is coal miners killed because of safety violations. Greed is unaffordable drugs. Greed is underperforming CEO’s with big pay packages.

Let me give you a real-life example of greed. There’s a company where the CEO has secured about a $100 million retirement package,[9] he’s fired 16,385 employees,[10] he also got a 72% pay increase to $16.6 million.[11] And of course this would be great if he had actually increased shareholder value. That’s his job. The only problem is that the company’s stock price has drastically underperformed its peers and dropped 40% over the last five year—twice as much as the AMEX Pharmaceutical Index.[12] So he didn’t do a great job, and still got all that money for himself. The company’s name is Pfizer.

Greed. It’s pretty easy to recognize. And our society is built on it. We have removed all sense of decency; we have pulled out all the stops. According to the New York Times average worker pay has remained flat since 1990—sixteen long years—at around $27,000, after adjusting for inflation,
while CEO compensation has QUADRUPLED, from $2.82 million to $11.8 million.[13]

So the CEO’s made sure their million dollar compensation increased by 400%
while the workers saw virtually no increase. What’s wrong with this? What is
wrong is that the CEO’s have been put in a position in which they can
basically use our American companies as their personal piggy banks. They
have unlimited power, they put in their own board of directors and pay
consultants. And then they start robbing our corporations. And this is
perfectly legal as long as they get someone else to sign their check.
Meanwhile, the federal minimum wage has remained at $5.15 an hour since
September 1, 1997. In fact, after adjusting for inflation, the value of the
minimum wage is at its second lowest level since 1955 [14].

And don’t think congress isn’t helping these very rich men. Imagine you get
an award from your employer, taking a trip on an airplane to a vacation spot
in Cancun. Of course you’ll have to pay tax on the full value of your
airfare. But if the CEO flies to the same spot on the corporate jet, at
fifty times your cost, he doesn’t have to pay more tax than you did. This is
a law courtesy of U.S. Congress, elected by our people. In short, our
country, our corporations, our future, is being stolen away by rich men in
handmade suits and our elected representatives are helping them.

Anyone heard of the Abramoff affair? Mr. Abramoff’s actions have prompted
Assistant Attorney General Alice Fisher to state, “Government officials and
government action are not for sale.� According to the Baltimore Sun, “This
was an outrageous lie. Just because the excessive chutzpah and greed of
Jack-the-Corrupter Abramoff and his gang got them nabbed does not negate the political reality that government officials and government action have been, still are, and in all likelihood will remain for sale.�[15]

There is nothing cheaper to buy than a congressman or two; or a President.
Let me explain; every year we see these tallies of millions spent on
lobbying. The pharmaceutical industry in 2003 spent $143 million on lobbying
activities according to the Center for Public Integrity. At that time, there
were 1,274 registered pharmaceutical lobbyists in Washington, D.C. During
the 2004 election cycle, the drug industry contributed $1 million to
President Bush.[16]

The full text of the speech is available at the link above. Also of relevance is a recent piece by Barbara Ehrenreich called The High Cost of Doing Without Health Care.