Pfizer To Give Free Viagra, Lipitor To Unemployed

In what's got to count as either a brilliant PR move or a cynical attempt to keep some patients from switching to generic drugs or an even more cynical attempt to guy goodwill during the current health care reform debate, pharma giant Pfizer has announced that it will give many of its drugs free of charge to recently unemployed and uninsured people. The program will cover 70 of its drugs--Lipitor and Viagra included, and probably Zoloft and Geodon as well--and will offer them to people for a year. It'll be interesting to see what bang Pfizer gets for its buck.

Interesting bit from the AP piece on this program:

"Colleagues suggested employees could donate to a fund to help support the effort, Puente said. He said some employees had tears in their eyes when discussing how they could help people who had lost jobs."

Crying pharma employees? Oh, please. And the AP quoted this without witnessing it themselves? Lame.

While I know Pfizer is trying to paint itself as pharma humanitarian of the year here, the reality is that no pharma company--hell, no corporation of any kind--does anything like this without expecting something in return and being able to predict a return. Can't wait to see what that return is.

Or maybe I am just too cynical myself to understand how wonderful and giving Big Pharma can be.