Jon Stewart got big cheers — and later, for the same reason, huge gasps — from Monday’s “The Daily Show” audience when he expressed outrage at how pharmaceutical companies are fleecing Americans by shattering a coffee mug. And, in doing so, sliced the hell out of his hand.
The bit came late in his discussion of the purported mission Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s corrupt “government efficiency” scam DOGE. Stewart expressed support for the concept DOGE purports to be based on — stripping fraud, waste and abuse out of government spending. But, as he noted, the organization seems focused mainly on making people miserable, killing programs or life-saving scientific research they happen to disagree with politically, while also trafficking lies or disinformation.
“I’m gonna tell you something,” Stewart said after spending more than 10 minutes breaking a lot of that down. “Cutting money shouldn’t be this hard. I’m starting to think that we as a country don’t understand where the real waste, fraud and abuse in our system, really is.”
“Maybe the savings we gleaned from cutting VA, nurses and iguana STD studies isn’t where the real money is,” he continued, joking that he was going to join DOGE and that he bought an “I want to be an accountant starter kit” from Amazon for $5,000. “So we’re looking to save taxpayers some money. And I know, oh, let me think, studies that are done or, oh, how about we just take $3 billion in subsidies we give to oil and gas companies that already turned billions in profit.”
“Oh, wait, how about we just close down the carried interest loophole on hedge funds? That’s $1.3 billion a year. Oh, how about we stop the $2 trillion we’ve given to defense contractors to build a fighter jet that blows, when everybody knows the next war is going to be fun with drones and blockchain, whatever that is. Holy s—, I can’t believe it. I could save just billions of dollars in 11 seconds,” he went on.
“This is where the real money is. The real money, the money our free market-ish system uses to prop up corporate profit at the expense of the taxpayer. Pharmaceutical companies get everything from our government: tax breaks, research grants, patent extensions worth billions of dollars,” Stewart continued. “And what do we, the people get for it? The highest drug prices in the Western Hemisphere, and for some reason, the possibility of an infection in our perineum.”
This was a reference to the warnings that many advertised medicines have.
“But you know what’s so horrible about our system now, and the corruption that lays within it? We’re so numb to it, we actually tout tiny cracks in that exploitation as victory,” Stewart explained, at which point he rolled a clip of former President Joe Biden extolling a deal to get discounts on a limited range of drugs.
“The companies we subsidize with billions of dollars are allowing us the privilege to negotiate the price of 10 of their drugs, and 10 is all of them, right?” Stewart said with heavy sarcasm.
Then he became audibly angry, gradually raising his voice as he said, “It would be embarrassing if it was a small drop in the bucket, and that the American people didn’t expect that we should negotiate for all their drugs, because we’ve already paid for it with our subsidies.”
At that, Stewart shattered his coffee cup by grabbing it and smashing it on his desk. The audience roared with approval as Stewart hastily tucked his hand under his desk and joked, “I’m going to go to the hospital soon.”
Then he continued, imagining a conversation between that industry and taxpayers. “What we do at pharmaceutical companies is like the worst Shark Tank deal in history,” He said. “‘Well, we’re asking for billions of dollars of your money.’ ‘Oh, what do we get? 10% of your company?’ ‘No.’ ‘Do we get a discount?’ ‘No.’ ‘What do we get?’ ‘Have you checked your perineum?’”
“We live in the upside down,” he continued “And don’t blame the corporations. They are profit seeking psychopaths that need the lowest wages and the cheapest raw materials to drive their highest profits. But why do we, the taxpayers subsidize their psychopathy? That’s the waste, fraud and abuse in our system. That’s it. That what we should be going after, not the fantastical over generous terrorist condom allowances.”
He continued along these lines, eventually suggesting that an alternative to DOGE be created that would actually go after this stuff. But he comically shouted “abort!” when he realized his proposed acronym spelled “Mangione,” as in Luigi Mangione.
He also pulled his hand up from his desk at one point,
Watch the whole segment below:
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