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That's the title of the lead article in the print edition of today's NY
Times. My first reaction was to be appalled by the consequences for
Puerto Ricans that will no longer have access to antibiotics and other
essential medicines.
But when you begin reading the article, you see that it has an entirely
different focus:
Federal officials and major drugmakers are scrambling to prevent
national shortages of critical drugs for treating cancer, diabetes and
heart disease, as well as medical devices and supplies, that are
manufactured at 80 plants in hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico.
Pharmaceuticals and medical devices are the island’s leading exports,
and Puerto Rico has become one of the world’s biggest centers for
pharmaceutical manufacturing. Its factories make 13 of the world’s
top-selling brand-name drugs, from Humira, the rheumatoid arthritis
treatment, to Xarelto, a blood thinner used to prevent stroke, according
to a report released last year.
With business of nearly $15 billion a year at stake in Puerto Rico, drug
companies and device makers are confronting a range of obstacles on the
island: locating enough diesel fuel for generators to run their
factories; helping their employees get to work from areas where roads
are damaged and blocked, electricity is down and phones don’t work.
Companies have taken out radio ads pleading with workers to check in.
The pharmaceutical and device industries contribute to the employment of
nearly 100,000 people on the island, according to trade groups.
“Some of these products are critical to Americans,” Scott Gottlieb, the
commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, told a congressional
panel this week. “A loss of access could have significant public health
consequences.”
---
To understand how pharmaceuticals became a major part of the island's
economy, you need to read this article in Dollars and Sense:
Puerto Rico is a colony of the United States. Colonial status, with some
exceptions, is not a good basis for economic progress.
Recently, the details of the Puerto Rican economic mess, and especially
the financial crisis, have become almost daily fodder for the U.S.
press. Yet, the island’s colonial status and the economic impact of that
status, which lie at the foundation of the current debacle, have been
largely ignored.
Puerto Rico, like other colonies, has been administered in the interests
of the “mother country.” For example, for many years, a provision of the
U.S. tax code, Section 936, let U.S. firms operate on the island without
incurring taxes on their Puerto Rican profits (as long as those profits
were not moved back to the states). This program was portrayed as a job
creator for Puerto Rico. Yet the principal beneficiaries were U.S.
firms—especially pharmaceutical firms. When this tax provision was in
full-force in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it cost the U.S.
government on average more than $3.00 in lost tax revenue for each $1.00
in wages paid in Puerto Rico by the pharmaceuticals. (What’s more, the
pharmaceuticals, while they did produce in Puerto Rico, also located
many of their patents with their Puerto Rican subsidiaries, thus
avoiding taxes on the profits from these patents.)
full: http://dollarsandsense.org/archives/2015/1115macewan.html
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