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carmencita ago

http://exiledonline.com/blood-sucking-freaks-the-rightwing-billionaires-at-cerberus-capital-literally-pump-human-blood-for-profit/

BLOOD SUCKING FREAKS: THE RIGHT WING BILLIONAIRES AT CERBERUS CAPITAL LITERALLY SUCK BLOOD FROM THE POOR

Cerberus Capital, one of Wall Street’s most notoriously ruthless leveraged-buyout firms (or “private equity firms” in PC-speak), recently made a $1.8 billion killing on their human plasma investment, a company called Talecris, which they bought for a mere $82.5 million just four years earlier. Meaning Cerberus made 23 times their investment on human plasma. They did it by the most savage, heartless means possible: by paying peanuts to their impoverished human plasma donors, who increasingly come from Mexican border towns to blood-pumping stations set up on the American side, jacking up the price of plasma by restricting supply (a lawsuit filed by the Federal Trade Commission accused Cerberus Plasma Holdings of “operat[ing] as an oligopoly”), and then selling the refined products to the most desperately ill, patients suffering from hemophilia, severe burns, multiple sclerosis, and autoimmune deficiencies. The products cost so much—one, IVIG (intravenous immunoglobulin) cost twice the price of gold as of last summer — that American health insurance companies have been dropping or denying their policy holders in increasing numbers, endangering untold numbers.

Profiting from ruined American lives is nothing new to Cerberus — which takes its name from the legendary three-headed attack dog of Greek legend who guards the gates of Hell, making sure no condemned soul ever escapes. How appropriate too.