Pfizer stands to lose $10 billion per year when the patent for Lipitor, its cholesterol drug, expires. This year's patent expirations are expected to lighten big pharma's collective wallet and leave consumers with $50 billion more as generics take the place of patented drugs.

The government wants to keep big pharma fat. The National Institutes of Health director Dr. Francis S. Collins has proposed a billion-dollar subsidy for the biggest drug makers. This is the U.S. government, which specializes in driving the nation into bankruptcy by prolific deficit spending to feed the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned about over 50 years ago, to no heed. NYT reports Dr. Collins as saying "that government research efforts were intended to feed the private sector, not compete with it."

But the government competes quite well with this sort of behavior, as told by NYT:

In 2009, Pfizer paid the largest criminal fine in the nation's history as part of a $2.3 billion settlement over marketing drugs for unapproved uses. Some analysts say larger fraud and foreign bribery cases will come.

Certainly Pfizer deserves government largesse.

[As a follow-on aside to the above observation.] Remember "the truth" the public was told about the Iraq war (threat, cost) (and U.S. government torture at Abu Ghraib & Guantanamo)? The Afghanistan war? The BP oil spill? (Contrast to Time Magazine, in partnership with CNN, two top press organs.) Notice how the mainstream press has stopped reporting on the damage from BP corporate malfeasance, and is instead worrying about higher oil prices and getting more offshore drilling going, now that the urge for democracy is raging in the Middle East.

In thematically related news, the Supreme Court has refused to review a lower court ruling that lets big pharma bribe generic drug makers to not make generic versions of drugs going off patent. This tidy corporate gambit is estimated to cost consumers $3.5 billion each year.

The federal government largely refuses to aid its unemployed, thrown out of work by corporate malfeasance and the inevitable repercussions, but is happy to help out huge corporations in every industry. Democracy at work.