Why Are Hedge Funds Killing American Jobs?
Hedge fund managers are utilizing a sleazy new moneymaking strategy that threatens to destroy jobs in one of America’s largest and most innovative sectors. Infamous hedge fund manager Kyle Bass is spearheading this campaign against America’s biopharmaceutical companies, and his only goal is turning a profit, no matter the consequences.
All Americans depend on the biopharmaceutical industry for a healthy and happy life, and many Americans depend on the industry for more. The U.S. biopharmaceutical sector employs more than 810,000 workers and supports a total of 3.4 million jobs. Americans are hard at work every day researching new medical breakthroughs, developing lifesaving drugs, and assisting in these efforts through a wide variety of jobs.
One biopharmaceutical start-up, Inspirita Inc., recently opened its corporate headquarters in Florida. Over the next two years, the company expects to add 70 jobs in positions as diverse as research, development, sales, marketing, and administrative and regional management support. Across the country, people rely on companies like Inspirita for jobs, benefits, and income.
So why are hedge fund managers attempting to destroy jobs in the biopharmaceutical sector?
Manipulating the Market
In 2011, Congress created the Inter Partes Review (IPR) system in an effort to fast-track legitimate patent challenges and protect intellectual property from patent trolls. This system has not been a success, and hedge fund managers are using its flaws to their advantage.
They challenge biopharmaceutical patents, all while betting against their shares on the stock market. These patent challenges scare investors away, and hedge fund managers use that knowledge and their influence to make obscene profits.
When biopharmaceutical companies lose investors, they lose funding for current research and development (R&D), they can no longer afford to back future R&D spending, and they are forced to cut jobs. This domino effect of demise is set into motion by hedge fund managers who only care about making millions – or billions – at the industry’s expense.
Kyle Bass and his cohorts insist that they are challenging patents to help patients. When patents are invalidated, cheaper generic drugs can enter the market, and biopharmaceutical companies with legitimate patents suffer. However, if a generic drug enters the market, the branded drug pricing is completely lost, and R&D funding disappears. Generic drugs may be cheaper, but they stifle innovation and ultimately hurt patients, preventing biopharmaceutical companies from inventing lifesaving medications. Hedge fund managers use a pro-generic drug agenda to loosely veil their greedy strategy, but they know the truth.
The Real Cost
This hedge fund strategy harms average Americans in more ways than one. Aside from stifling innovation and preventing companies from investing in potentially lifesaving research and development, the strategy threatens to bankrupt certain companies, leaving many Americans unemployed. If biopharmaceutical companies are forced to shut down, American families who rely on the industry for employment, benefits, and income will be left with limited prospects, and our economy will suffer.
The Wisconsin biopharmaceutical sector alone supports roughly 50,000 local jobs and contributes $4.5 billion to the state economy annually. If patents are left unprotected, Wisconsin’s impressive track record as an innovation leader would die, and the R&D efforts that propel the state’s economy would be marginalized.
Hedge fund managers are threatening to destroy American jobs, hurt American patients, and extinguish the flame of American innovation, all in the name of turning a profit. Don’t let hedge fund managers manipulate the patent system and gamble away your future health.
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