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Keep an eye out for the silent revolutions
Four Dutch Hospitals take on Big Pharma
Revolutions have always fascinated me. When we were students we imagined them to be glorious with people overthrowing dictators and breaking down the walls of privilege and palaces. And then of course the Arab spring came and the Orange revolution …and they went again. But while in Cuba people are in the streets protesting I wonder if there are perhaps revolutions taking place under our noses every day. That we need to look for the cracks in the system more than the ruptures. The silent clashes taking place away from the public eye.
Let me give you an example. Lately my eye fell on an article in the Dutch financial newspaper; ‘four Dutch hospitals are starting their own line of medication.’ Apparently the hospitals are uniting to resist ‘patent’ hijacking by big pharmaceutical companies. Meaning, that when a pharmaceutical company receives licencing for a given drug, the hospitals who developed the medicine in the first place is no longer allowed to produce or sell their own recipe. This is quite common and it drives up health care costs disproportionately. For example a bottle of eye drops for a rare eye disease which was previously made at the hospital pharmacy for 20,00 Euro is now priced 1000,00 after official registration by Big Pharma.
