Clinton Brokers Landmark AIDS Deal. AIDS for Everyone! Hooray!

Former president Clinton facilitated an international AIDS drug deal recently.  The WJ Clinton Presidential Foundation allows unnamed partnered drug companies in India and South Africa to "cut costs" enough to provide treatment for 40 cents a day (as opposed to $1.50). A spokesman for the Foundation explains:

"As we battled for a better way to get AIDS drugs to poorer patients, we could not overcome the problem of pricing. We did our research and concluded that there was a tremendous market for these drugs in poor countries. If we could only lower the cost of individual treatment to somewhere around 40-50% per capita GNP, we'd really be somewhere. We knew that we could vastly expand the market, and increase total profit if we could find a way to effectively price discriminate.
Unfortunately, price breaks for the poor are not as popular as for the elderly or normal sized children. Moreover, as that one episode of the Cosby Show illustrates, what is to keep a wealthy NYC doctor from posing as a destitute patient from Nigeria.
That's when someone got the idea from the ice cream market in Cuba. Wealthy US dollar spenders can purchase ice cream at a kiosk, while poorer peso holders purchase theirs at a nearby stand, at much lower prices. Thus price discrimination on the basis of currency, or better yet, nationality was discovered to be the best way to separate income groups."

Skeptics note that prices are still at cartel levels and that Clinton's showmanship and jazzy riffs are meant to distract the people from the fact that only four drug makers have been licensed, giving them an effective oligopoly. Others, including rock star Bono, objected, saying that if there is a showy distraction in the battle to make money off of AIDS, it is he.
Critics of the current administration cite the Clinton deal as evidence of Bush's outdated approach. "The problem with the monopolies that we give to drug companies is that the imposed high prices severely restricts the market. Profit margins are higher, but we are ripping off fewer people, and most of them are Americans. It takes a crafty Democrat to think of creating two protected markets for only one product," remarked Senator Lieberman.
"In the past two decades, we have seen easy financing and incessant marketing lead to amazing car ownership levels in the US, at more than one automobile per driver," Historian James Cocktoasten remarked on the spread of societal signifiers. "I doubt that people in the third world will look on AIDS lightly while treatment may cost almost half of one's earnings. Couple the lower price with pre-approved credit cards, and we'll see families rushing off to get their teenage sons and daughters AIDS, just to show the neighbors that they can afford to. This will be known as the day Bill Clinton gave the world AIDS."