Drug Makers Score Early Wins as Plan Takes Shape

[nightrain]

Source: WSJ

By ALICIA MUNDY and LAURA MECKLER
WASHINGTON -- The pharmaceuticals industry, which President Barack Obama promised to "take on" during his campaign, is winning most of what it wants in the health-care overhaul.

The final contours of the legislation are far from settled, but the industry, led by a onetime powerful congressman, has notched a string of victories.

Legislation expected soon in the powerful Senate Finance Committee will leave out cost-cutting steps as part of an agreement with the industry and the White House, according to Congressional aides, industry lobbyists and others involved in the talks.

The missing items include two planks of Mr. Obama's campaign platform: allowing cheaper drugs to be imported from Canada and giving the federal government the right to negotiate Medicare drug prices directly with pharmaceutical companies.

Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124779006528954995.html#mod=rss_US_News

---

The massive transfer of wealth from citizens to corporations continues for drug companies and the health insurance extortion corporations. This is not what I voted for in November.

[Delphinus]

1. Nor I.

This really hurts.

[newfie11]

2. It great to live in a country where money talks

and you can buy what you want from the politicians.:sarcasm:

[WillParkinson]

3. So which chess move is this one?

I've kind of lost count.

[Somawas]

4. I don't believe in this change.

Not even a little.

[Steerpike]

5. Not much to be said...

This huge thrill of victory at the end of the election has faded. Winning the Presidency and finally having a majority in congress is apparently not enough.

I'm willing to give it all a little more time, but time is running out. I believe bold moves are necessary in both the economy and health care. But, there is no boldness here...just compromise and empty promise.

[zeemike]

9. no and it will never be enough.

As long as money controls politics.
I don't care how good a man like Obama is he has limited power as long as the corporations have the congress in their pockets.
We will never have real reform until we take the money out of politics, and there is little will to do that among our leadership for the same reason.
And they will continue to keep us busy fighting for single issues so that we don't mess with the money train that they are on.
It is amazing to me how easy it is to manipulate people with media and causes.

[natrat]

13. that's not going to stop outright bribery and cayman island accounts

[zeemike]

19. That may well be true, but those are illegal things.

What we now have is legal bribery and noting can be done to stop it.

[NeoConsSuck]

26. Corporate America

just decided to have the other team represent them this election cycle. I don't know who is representing me, but it sure isn't the Democratic party.

[salguine]

6. Big. Fucking. Surprise.

[fasttense]

7. I'm not sure this will survive when it gets to the House/Senate conference.

The House has a group of pretty strong liberals who may not go along with this. I think this bill out of the Senate Finance Committee is Baucus's wet dream and a give away to corporations. Not negotiating the price of drugs is what is costing Medicare so much. If we just changed this one law, Medicare would be perfectly affordable and would be solvent for years. Seems the Repukes, with their Dem enabler Baucus, are trying to make our new "public option" as unaffordable as Medicare currently is.

Destroying the program before it even gets out of the Senate committee.

[JTFrog]

8. WSJ put a completely different spin on this yesterday:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124770335901048655.html#mod=article-outset-box

* JULY 16, 2009

Big Pharma Gets Played
Congress repays business silence with price controls.

As an old Washington hand, pharmaceutical lobbyist Billy Tauzin should know better than to trust a politician. His corporate clients and their shareholders may soon pay for his attempt to get cozy with ObamaCare.

Mr. Tauzin -- the former Democratic Congressman turned Republican turned pharmaceutical frontman -- has been assuring his CEO employers that he can get them a good deal if they negotiate with Democrats instead of opposing them on health care. And to show its bona fides, the drug lobby announced in June an agreement with Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus, promising $80 billion over the next decade to defray drug costs for seniors and to finance the Obama plan. Mr. Tauzin believed this giveaway would spare his industry from price controls and the reimportation of cheaper foreign drugs that would reduce company margins and profits.

Mr. Tauzin should have demanded a pre-nup. House Democrats declared last week that they aren't bound by Senator Baucus's deal. And this week they released a health-care bill that pocketed the industry concessions for senior drug coverage, and also imposed the very price controls Mr. Tauzin thought he'd shelved. These mandatory "rebates" on drugs for seniors would cost the industry $50 billion more over a decade than the $80 billion the industry promised Mr. Baucus. And that's optimistic. Democrat Henry Waxman cheerfully explained it was only "equitable" to devote the industry's "windfall" profits to seniors.

Meanwhile, Mr. Tauzin's fellow Cajun, Louisiana Republican David Vitter, sponsored an amendment that passed the Senate last week to allow Americans to buy cheap drugs from Canada over the Internet. Among the 55 Senators who voted for this form of drug reimportation was none other than Mr. Baucus. As for the White House, Mr. Waxman last week said he'd been told that the Administration also doesn't feel bound by the $80 billion agreement. This isn't surprising since Mr. Obama had co-sponsored the same legislation with Mr. Vitter when he was an Illinois Senator in 2006.

...

[drm604]

17. So there's some hope.

Hopefully this article is correct and my response below was uncalled for.

[natrat]

10. change you can believe in, such a fraud

[TacticalPeek]

11. Where does one go to report a lost country?

:shrug:

[Bluenorthwest]

12. And so yesterday's nice speech is yet again balanced

by the truth.

[FunkyLeprechaun]

14. Hmm...

Aneurin Bevan's famous quote on silencing the critics of the NHS- "I stuffed their mouths with gold."

We shall see what happens.

[JTFrog]

15. And ya'll just bite, hook, line and sinker. n/t

[drm604]

16. Senate Finance Committee will leave out cost-cutting steps as part of an agreement with the industry

WTF? Think about this. Why do they have to make an agreement with the industry? They should be telling the industry how things are going to be, not making agreements with them. :banghead:

Giving away the right to negotiate drug prices? W T F ?

There's going to be no cost cutting. There's going to be no savings. This is going to be a pointless bill that won't achieve anything except for forcing everyone to buy the insurance industries product.

This is an insurance and pharma industry benefits bill.
:banghead::banghead::banghead::banghead::banghead::banghead::banghead::banghead::banghead::banghead:

This is going to need major changes if it's going to help anybody other than powerful corporations.

[bvar22]

22. Not only no cost cutting....

...but NOW you are going to be FORCED to BUY under penalty of LAW.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

27. Right - the FINANCE Committee will leave out COST-CUTTING steps

as part of an agreement with the industry.

Can I share your head banging wall?

:banghead::banghead::banghead::banghead::banghead::

[mnhtnbb]

18. Power does not roll over. Money isn't giving up or in.

[McCamy Taylor]

20. This is so messed up.

[Metta]

21. The slippery slide from the mountain top continues. No strategy here except to appease.

Happy karma, traitors.

[rollingrock]

23. The Senate Inc.

I have always been bothered by the fact that we had two Senators on the Dem ticket in 08 because the Senate is by far the most corporate-friendly of the two legislative branches of government. My fears seem to have been well-founded. These Senators are absolutely worthless!

[kath]

24. Surprise, surprise, surprise!!

[GeorgeGist]

25. When private investors win ...

the public must lose. That's the bottom line of capitalism.