He might be a great chess player, but Obama's poker skills are debatable

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

Epecially when he's seated at the table with the sharks from Pharma
*************************************************************************************************************************************
http://peaceandjustice.org/article.php/20090808092501841
8/8/09 - Obama's $80 Billion Deal with Pharma Is a Very Bad Deal for Us
William Greider
The Nation

skip
So now we know why the president wants everyone to make nice in the healthcare debate. His White House has cut a deal with Big Pharma that smells like the same old rotten politics that candidate Obama regularly denounced and promised to end. The drug industry agrees to deliver $80 billion in future savings and the president promises the government will not use its awesome purchasing power to negotiate lower drug prices.

Wow. This is roughly the same deal that George W. Bush cut with the drug makers when he was legislating Medicare's new coverage of drug purchases. It is the same bargain that Democrats in Congress universally condemned as wasteful and corrupt. The deal does not smell any better now that a Democratic president is embracing it.

In effect, Obama wants to give away one of the principal objectives of strong reform. The details were spelled out in today's New York Times and revealed by Big Pharma's top-dog lobbyist, Billy Tauzin, a former Republican congressman who leads the industry association. Tauzin called it a "rock-solid deal," and the White House did not dispute as much. But that is not the last word.

People who believe in real healthcare reform should not be nice about this. They must rise up and rebel against our popular new president's outrageous concession. They must demand that Congress declare the private deal-making null and void. If Congress lacks the nerve to do this, then this exercise in reform begins to look more and more like previous attempts that were eviscerated by the clout of the corporate interests.
*******************************************************************************************************************

http://finance.senate.gov/hearings/testimony/2004test/042704gantest.pdf
Mr. Chairman, members of the Senate Finance Committee, and fellow panelists, my name is Gerard Anderson and I am a professor in the Bloomberg School of Public Health and a professor of Medicine in the School of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University.

skip
Second, our analysis shows that the U.S. pays twice as much for a market basket of 30 commonly prescribed pharmaceuticals as other industrialized countries.

skip
Exhibit 5 shows the overall effects of the simulations on total spending and the distribution of spending among payers (Medicare, out-of-pocket costs, and other third-party payers). The model indicates that total spending on pharmaceuticals by Medicare beneficiaries in 2006 will be $101.9 billion, $44.5 billion of which will be financed by the Medicare program.
************************************************************************************************************************************

IN SUMMARY

President Obama "negotiated" 80 billion in savings from the pharmeceutical industry in exchange for no future price reduction negotiations. If Medicare benficiaries spent 102 billion IN A SINGLE YEAR in 2006 , then that means that President Obama wrestled a whopping 8% savings SPREAD OUT OVER 10 YEARS!!!!!!!

My friends, this is an actual outrage. There is no way that Congress should let this very, very, bad deal stand.



(here's some additional reading/ 2007 testimony about what's wrong with the way the government purchases drugs.)
http://oversight.house.gov/documents/20070209123654-09260.pdf

[Better BeLIEve Bull]

1. he's got you thinking he's bluffing

now doesn't he?

[burning rain]

2. Really, the best metaphor for Obama's modus operandi is pinball.

Or is it mah-jongg? Or maybe shuffleboard or pinochle? lulz. These game metaphors. Just as long as it doesn't become 52-card pickup--that'd mean a rough 2010.