Um, who’s bought and paid for by the drug lobby?
We’ve endured a week’s worth of Democrat demagoguery about how opponents of Obamacare are nothing but corporate shills for evil health care corporations (Pelosi: “villains!”; Gibbs questioning motives)
Well, I’ve pointed out the corporate funding of the health care czar and AG Eric Holder.
Now, this:
The drug industry has authorized its lobbyists to spend as much as $150 million on television commercials supporting President Obama’s health care overhaul, beginning over the August Congressional recess, people briefed on the plans said Saturday.
The unusually large scale of the industry’s commitment to the cause helps explain some of a contentious back-and-forth playing out in recent days between the odd-couple allies over a deal that the White House struck with the industry in June to secure its support. The terms of the deal were not fully disclosed. Both sides had announced that the drug industry would contribute $80 billion over 10 years to the cost of the health care overhaul without spelling out the details.
With House Democrats moving to extract more than that just as the drug makers finalized their advertising plans, the industry lobbyists pressed the Obama administration for public reassurances that it had agreed to cap the industry’s additional costs at $80 billion. The White House, meanwhile, has struggled to mollify its most pivotal health industry ally without alienating Congressional Democrats who want to demand far more of the drug makers. White House officials could not immediately be reached for comment.
Big Pharma + Dear Leader = Crazy delicious.
Hope and Change!
***
No less than Robert Reich engages in some “un-American” questioning of the White House:
How soon until big industries and their Washington lobbyists have become so politically powerful that secret White House-industry deals like this are prerequisites to any important legislation? When will it become standard practice that such deals come with hundreds of millions of dollars of industry-sponsored TV advertising designed to persuade the public that the legislation is in the public’s interest? (Any Democrats and progressives who might be reading this should ask themselves how they’ll feel when a Republican White House cuts such deals to advance its own legislative priorities.)
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Categories: Health care
Nice Deb
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Doesn’t this seem like suicide for pharmaceuticals? What would they get out of socialized medicine? I’m not seeing the answer here.
Michelle…
PAID for…
I finally found a person who is a paid hack of big pharma!!!
OBAMA!!!
Red State has a list of Craig’s List work classifieds for pay activsts.
The white house and congress will do anything to socialize this country in the image of Marx and Lenin. Meanwhile, Scotus looks the other way. The whole government is unconstitutional in its policies.
at first blush this does seem strange, but with the gubmint being the biggest purchaser of drugs by far, the deal becomes a bit more understandable. who knows what quid pro quo deals were given by the gubmint to secure an 80 billion dollar backing of the bill. those guys didn’t meet in the white house with a camera going and recording for posterity who got what. they met in secret, and the white house announced they secured this deal. what was their half of the deal? i haven’t heard a peep about that, from either side of the deal, but if history is a teacher, it’s good for the politburo, good for the companies, and bad for the taxpayer.
What!!!???
You mean there isn’t a Czarbyist to deal with this kind of thing?
I agree with cheapseat #6.
Just like with most “purchase in quantity” deals, you can get it cheaper as your numbers rise. A steady, dependable contract for – oh, say 350 million – Americans would be a not-insignificant contract order.
we’re on a slippery slope to fascism..
In some cases, we are an over medicated society. We want to take a pill and have everything go away. Pills come with side effects. We over use antibiotics. Some go to the doctor for every sniffle and happily go off and get an antibiotic when the infection is caused by a virus. How much medical care is provided for things which didn’t need the intervention? Schools will send home notes stating that a student has some infection and recommends that other get checked out even if there are no symptoms. When the true costs of unnecessary care is hidden from the public, the costs for all will go up. I have refused tests and fail to fill Rxs which I felt I didn’t need. When I refused a test, the response was – “why do you care, you’re not paying for it?” So then I had to explain that ultimately, I am paying for it with increased fees for my health insurance.
The pharmaceutical companies are sowing the seeds of their own destruction in this whole debacle by supporting this. This $150-200 million being spent this Fall on advertising to push ObamaCare on behalf of the administration was after the administration cut them a deal to limit their additional cost exposure to $80 million. Fat chance of that last part actually happening.
The drug industry thinks they are going to get a new revenue stream from all these “uninsured.” That may happen initially. But, as Milton Friedman pointed out in this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPADFNKDhGM
it is an incremental advantage until the government needs to further reduce costs. Then the government will lower the hammer on them and basically nationalize the drug industry.
Along with that nationalization, will go all the innovation we and other countries rely on.
I think the fantasy of the drug companies is that having pledged this sum of $80 billion dollars (hardly chump change even in the Obama Administration), they will then own the regulators and will be able to put the screws to any potential competitors. I highly doubt it will work out that way. Herr Obama and his minions play for keeps, so the drug companies will be lucky to have their hides once he is done with them. This is Chicago politics on steroids (a ghastly image, I admit) and it is how fascism is done in the real world.
What sort of “overhaul” would require an investment of $8 billion a year for the next 10 years? Is this the administrations way of fudging the numbers on the total cost? They will take this amount but what they extorted from the the hospital association earlier and deduct it from their price tag.
We don’t need an overhaul, we just need to address the issues that are the cause of problems in our health care/insurance starting with tort reform and then moving on to portability of coverage. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel.
TigerLady,
I used to work for a major defense contractor. We were routinely millions over budget and years behind schedule. Nobody seemed to care. It was guaranteed income from the bottomless pockets of “Uncle Sam” (who took the money from citizens). I suspect that the pharmaceutical industry is licking its chops salivating over the prospect of getting “government money”.
As an aside, working for this contractor was very depressing. The prevailing and pervasive cultural climate was one of apathy, futility, and depression. We were tiny cogs in a massive impersonal machine. Job performance had little to do with getting promoted. My boss even admitted to me that he didn’t know what I did so he couldn’t give me a better raise! An incompetent programmer got promoted over me, but she couldn’t even do hexadecimal arithmetic! People were just moping around trying to get through the day. Finally, I got a chance to get into the digital telephony industry and my career took off. My work mattered and I thrived. Why do I bring this up? The more the Feds get into our daily lives, the less motivation we’ll have to shine. Look at the American Indian reservations. These people are extremely dependent on the Federal government. They live in squalor. Alcoholism and gambling is very common. They have little ambition. Why? …because the Feds have hamstrung them by taking care of them. It’s demeaning and misguided, if not outright cruel. This is the road we are on if the Democrats AND Republicans have their way with us.
Michael Savage is looking more and more correct. We need drug testing for Congress and the president.
The pharmaceutical industry must be plying our “leaders” with drugs. It’s the only explanation.
…and to lgm: Awwwwwww, your poor wittle talking point broke. HaHaHaHaHaHaHa!!!!
That’s $80 billion that will get collected from privately insured people and won’t go to shareholders.
In some places, we call that a tax.
Jet Jaguar–ahhh, we’ll still have Bush.
What ever happened to the McCain-Feingold Act? While we’re at it, why isn’t it a violation of the Hatch Act for the entire top tier of the presidential line of succession to call on SEIU, government employees, to agitate for political purposes?
That is what happens when we allow government to strip individuals of their constitutional rights. What is “legal” becomes arbitrary. Expediency trumps efficiency. All goals become too important to be delayed by process.
They can save all this money by no longer doing research on life saving drugs for the very young and the elderly.
In a word, the public is being played. If not by Obama, then by those folksie Pharma ads on TV around the breakfast table. Or the AARP assuring citizens that it is in their best interest to see Medicare payments reduced by $80 billion — right, that’s money that will come out of their hides. Mine, actually, in a few years. Should I really be in favor of joining a program with a much higher doctor-patient ratio with lower reimbursement rates and a third-party commission of undetermined origin deciding cost-effective treatment based on (a) my age and (b) what the government thinks it can afford? Am I missing some selling point here?
Yes, Ron–the point is they say so.
Deal with “Big” Pharma is just an example of divide and conquer. The reason I put “big” in quotes is that I have owned some stock in Pfizer and Lilly for over ten years and it is worth less than when I bought it. What is so big about that? I am an owner of “big” pharma and other than the dividends I have seen no appreciation. Big is in the eye of the beholder. Meanwhile Proctor and Gamble, even with it’s recent decline, is up about 400%.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/realitycheck/
The new snitch website along with the brand new whitehouse talking points.
Imagine the Libtards’ and MSM’s outrage had Bush set up such a website to report “fishy” homeland security issues.
They see big bucks on the horizon. They can charge the government three to four times what they would normally get for drugs. If the government refused to pay, the buyers would be left to make up the difference. Either way the drug companies win. Remember, hospitals and nursing homes charge 18 to 20 dollars for one tylenol or aspirin. Medicare picks up that tab with no problem.
Global warming solved! Kill your children!
Actually, it’s American children who are the primary cause of global warming (wouldn’t you know it?).
Jet, I see your point but having worked in research doing clinical trials, I can’t understand that they don’t know that Uncle Barry isn’t going to let them do “business as usual”. If we are looking at the bottom line of healthcare as a business, there is no need for development of new drugs when rationing is the goal.
I’m certainly not disagreeing that it’s all about the money. It just doesn’t make sense to me when you can watch the destruction that’s ahead.
Glen Beck says it makes his brain hurt until he thinks blood will spurt out of his eyes. That kind of describes how I feel.
#20, much of the industry’s research and marketing is directed toward such life-threatening conditions as hyper energy among schoolboys, baldness and erectile dysfunction. Why? Because that’s where the profits are. The pharmaceutical industry has a long history of opportunism. Thus, when a scientist, without proof, declared a retrovirus to be the cause of AIDS, gays, relieved of having to take responsibility for their self-destructive lifestyles, began their stampede for medication and forced the FDA to suspend rules that protected the public in the wake of the thalidomide fiasco in order to meet this political pressure. The drug industry was only too happy to oblige, turning out toxic substances that killed countless thousands.
Misterbee241. When a hospital charges $10 for an aspirin this is cost shifting in an attempt to collect revenue from services that are not reimbursed. Ten dollars might be what is billed but insurance companies pay a contracted amount for all charges. I don’t know the exact percentage that Medicare pays but it isn’t 100%.
My insurance plan is a HMO and they pay a contracted rate for every charge from my doctor. He may bill X amount but I can assure you he doesn’t receive that amount.
Thank Teddy K for HMOs.
Of course, the current administration knows it won’t be able to pull the propaganda-puppet-strings on the networks forever – which is likely why they’re taking steps to handle that end of things themselves.
H.R. 3247… Establishing the Office of Propaganda
Ya’ll need to wake up and take to the streets, because we’ve been in that position for at least 20 years.
The secret deal probably went like this: This deal is between the signatories-oligopolies-and the US gov’t will pay for our products no matter what cost and inefficiency this agreement results in…YOU TAXPAYERS ARE GOING TO SUBSIDIZE US NO MATTER HOW MUCH WE SCREW UP-JUST LIKE GM, CHRYSLER AND I’M CERTAIN FORD DOWN THE LINE.
This is the essence of the agreement, I’m certain.
Pharmicutical company advertising their new drugs in the magazines, newsprint, radio, and television is NOT cost effective!
Why do we need to inform our medical “professionals” about new treatments/medications? I would think that with all the expense of hiring drug company representatives, that my doctor knows about “new” treatments.” In fact, I know he does.
In the eyes of our elected “non’representatives” the pharmicutical companies represent just one more CASH COW for which they feel free to legally plunder.
In the end, it is the American people putting all that re-election campaign money, free trips, and gifts into their hands.
Vote them out, and change the law!
Pharmaceutical companies are advertising themselves out of existence. I would also love to know where this 150 mil is coming from since they have been laying off employees left and right.