Dealing With Headaches

Not that they’d pay attention to little ol’ me, but you never know — this could give someone somewhere a good laugh.

Dear Big Pharma:

My name is Rena Sherwood. I am one of your millions upon millions of customers. I have endogeonous recurring depression and migraines. If the older members of my family are a good indication, I will also have deafness, arthritis, osteosporisis, spinal stenosis, diabetes type 2, cancer, stroke and dementia. These are all very profitable diseases and so I may soon be one of your biggest cutomers.

I have noticed that your industry is riding high right now and that you are being good capitalists and making as much money as you possibly can in order to please your stockholders. However, the American auto industry used to be profitable, too, and now they are on the brink of bankruptcy. By acting now, you can avoid such a fate in the future.

High drug prices are also causing much suffering among the millions of people who cannot afford your medications. Many of these medications are not only life-saving, they can keep someone working. Soon, most of your customers may shrink due to poverty or death.

Here are some suggestions on lowering the costs of your medications without having to anger your stockholders:

• Stop all television advertising. People don’t pay attention to commericals anyway. By lowering drug avertising, you lower your overhead and can pass the savings on to your cutomers. Besides, those commericals are incredibly annoying. By stopping them, you will instill large amounts of gratitude within your target audience.
• Stop spending millions on buying politicians to turn their heads the other way. Politicians get more and more expensive every year — and they are not loyal. They will always go for the highest bidder. What happens if in the near future another industry opposses Big Pharma and they can buy more politicians than you can possibly afford? It turns into a monetary arms race in which nobody wins.
• Make your CEO’s pay no more than what the President of the United States makes. In this case, pay just not means base salary, but perks and stock options as well.

Big Pharma, you know you rule the world. And you have products and jobs we need. But never take your cutomers for granted.

In Native American tribes, chiefs were followed not by how much posessions or powerful friends they had, but how much they served the tribe. They gave away many of their posessions and made sure the elderly, the sick and the orphans were taken care of. In that way, he gained the respect and obedience of the tribe. But if he were to be selfish or deceitful or downright stupid, then he would be ignored for the rest of his days.

Please be a wise chief the tribe will be honored to follow. Our lives are in your hands.

Rena Sherwood