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POZN for a headache

January 05, 2014 – Comments (4) | RELATED TICKERS: ARLZ , MO , MON

This blog usually contains a fairly dim view of the stocks many people injudiciously fawn over but today, I’m going to be a cheerleader for a stock with homely financials, no friends in their industry and a brilliant product that genuinely serves humanity. This may not impress people who hold stocks like Altria and Monsatan…er…Monsanto but for those do-gooders like me, who enjoy exposing corporations that really do make the world better, reading this should make your day. For those of you who don’t know, Pozen (POZN) is a little pharmaceutical company that figured out how to make high dosage aspirin easier on the human body. It directly competes with the established blood thinners in effectiveness and has far fewer negative long term effects. By all sensible and financially disinterested accounts, it should be the treatment of choice for ALL patients with circulatory issues. Not only have clinical trials proven its effectiveness and safety but it is also incredibly cheap to make. You would think, given the skyrocketing cost of health care, hospitals would be adopting this treatment immediately but for those understanding the close relationship of the FDA and ‘big pharma’, this lack of success is not surprising. POZN can price these aspirin derivative treatments like a public service and still make a wonderful return but in the process, some of the big pharma products would be displaced and ugly losses would eventually show up on their income statements. Big pharma will pull every lever and tweak any nose they can to prevent this from happening. Sadly this strategy has worked for about two years now and because of this, thousands of patients with heart and other circulatory blockage issues were prevented from using this economical alternative resulting in billions in profit for the entrenched healthcare interests and billions burdened upon the taxpayer. I never wanted a company to succeed as badly as I want this one to. From the CEO on down, they are the epitome of what a good corporate citizen should be and yet, they continue to struggle. This company is the poster child of what is wrong with America and if you buy it, know that you are buying a David sticking a finger in the eyes of a metaphorical Goliath but this time, the outcome might be different than in the book.