The COVID-19 Pandemic Exposes Fatal Health Inequities

“…Financialization furthers the restructuring of production both vertically and internationally, creating global production networks and enabling firms to raise prices (cost mark-ups), increase profits, and boost shareholder values. At the same time, financialization reduces investment to sanction higher dividend payments, share buybacks, mergers, and acquisitions, and other purchases of financial assets.¹⁴ The process of financializing firms supplying the health sector results in higher costs, as illustrated by trends in the U.S. pharmaceutical industry. Firms extract profit by accumulating excessive returns on assets (rent-generating intangibles like patents and trademarks), rather than by earning realistic revenues for socially useful products.¹⁵ This trend harms public health by raising the prices of drugs and reducing investment in medicine research and development. Financialization of the major U.S. pharmaceutical companies has evolved at the expense of drug innovation…”