David Sirota: We've already tried a trigger, it didn't work

[kpete]

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/09/12/trigger/index.html

David Sirota: We've already tried a trigger, it didn't work
by John Aravosis (DC) on 10/25/2009 12:21:00 PM

Triggers are the reason you and I pay three to five times as much as Europeans do for the same prescription drugs. David Sirota at Salon:

Recall that over the last decade, a maverick group of progressive and conservative lawmakers pushed bills to let Americans purchase cheaper, FDA-approved prescription drugs from other industrialized nations. It was (and is) a common-sense idea -- other countries allow importation, and the practice helps lower health costs by permitting consumers to buy medicines at the lowest world market price, not just at an artificially inflated domestic premium.

As with today's public option surveys, polls on importation showed strong national support for the concept. So rather than murder the drug legislation outright, congressional leaders joined the Clinton and Bush administrations in backing a "compromise": Importation bills were passed, but only those that gave the secretary of Health and Human Services the power to trigger -- or not trigger -- final implementation. Specifically, the secretary would have to first certify that imported medicines were "safe." (Drug companies promote the lie that Canadian medicine is mortally dangerous -- prompting Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty, an importation proponent, to ask, "Where are the dead Canadians?")

This trigger provision, of course, was lobbyists' poison pill -- and it worked as they planned. Importation has never been implemented, as no HHS secretary has pulled the trigger. Hence, Americans are still barred from wholesale importation of lower-priced medicine -- and pharmaceutical industry profiteering continues.

http://www.americablog.com/2009/10/david-sirota-weve-already-tried-trigger.html

[Cleita]

1. Yep, they did that on Medicare Part D, a legislation that needs to be

scrapped and done over again.

[JerseygirlCT]

2. k&R

[Vidar]

3. K&R

[ThomCat]

4. Creating a trigger that will never be used is a political fig leaf.

It is designed to let them do One thing (cave in to the insurance company wholesale) while allowing their public relation firms to spin things for them Swearing that they really did Something Else entirely different (stood up to the insurance companies to provide health care options for all Americans).

The trigger is a way of allowing them to lie to constituents. Nothing more. They can claim they were big heroes for health care, even while we all look around and see that there is STILL no health care available for most Americans.

:grr:

So much of what our politicians do is creating elaborate fig leafs, and they know this. They do this deliberately. They craft this big elaborate illusions of having done one thing while they deliberately do the exact opposite.

And yet they continue to sit in their cushy government seats not representing us because the we have no authority at all to force anyone to actually represent the will of the people. All we can do is wait until the next election and put vote for the next corporate approved candidates so we can watch new people do this to us next time. :(

Meanwhile, Obama is supporting the option the Insurance Industry wants instead of the least-bad option? Is this really the "Change We Can Believe In?" :grr:

[truedelphi]

5. I wish people like Sirota would not keep pushing the idea that

We pay three to five times more than Europeans for the drugs.

That is meaningless. The fact of the matter is that in America we pay as much as a 82,000 percent mark up on drugs. And while the Europeans may only pay 20% of that 82,000 percent markup, it is obvious that people in the industrialized nations are being scammed.

Why was it that Michael Moore took a boatload of people to Cuba and they received their prescriptions for just pennies on the dollar compared to what they pay here?

Anyway I did K & R this as Sirota is always speaking out about things that need to be said. But this time his message could be a lot stronger.

[eridani]

6. I can think of a trigger option that might work

But first you have to line the insurance company CEOs up against a wall.