Is Obama Selling Us Down the River to Big Pharma?

I've been on pins and needles watching the health care debate rage on. On the television, the radio, the newspapers, the Internet. Everywhere.

I can't help it. It's the most important issue we're facing today and when things go wrong I can get pretty angry.

You can imagine my reaction when I saw this article on the front page of the Huffington Post: White House Confirms: Deal With Big Pharma Bars Price Negotiations. How could that be?

It turns out that Obama has had lobbyists from Big Pharma in contact with the White House negotiating on their behalf about the "comprehensive" health care reform measures. The White House has signaled that it won't support two things we need in order to fix the problem in return for the Drug Lobby's support on the rest of the package.

The two things he sold us out on? You probably already read this and are just as pissed as I am, but I'll reiterate for the rest of you: it seems as though Obama isn't interested in saving tax payers' money, and doesn't want to allow Medicare to negotiate the price of the drugs it buys in bulk. And importing cheaper drugs from Canada (a country with sensible regulation on con artists like the drug companies)? That, too, is right out.

Can I ask why they get to negotiate at all? I understand that Obama wants to keep them in the neutral camp on health care reform because they can bring a lot of pressure on Congress, but wouldn't it be smarter to deal with that problem and work to eliminate their ability to exert that pressure?

Quite frankly, I don't care how much less profit they'll be making, price negotiations and free trade of drugs in Canada are two things that will be vital to a meaningful health care reform. It's not the business of the government to do the business of the people by working with interests other than those of the people. Bringing lobbyists from Big Pharma into the negotiations is anathema to the process and makes them feel like they deserve a place at that table.

And for being sold up the river what do we get in return? $80 billion dollars in savings over a decade that we could have legislated ourselves into anyway.

You can imagine how angry I am.

I understand that Obama is a deft politician, and he's playing politics. I get it.

I don't like it.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Obama is supposed to bring change, not bring us more of the same sorts of dealings with lobbyists and kowtowing to corporate interests. Is it a ruse? Is he just pretending?

If he is just pretending, he's playing a dangerous game.

Kurt Vonnegut (via Howard W. Campbell, Jr.) once said, "The moral here is that you must be careful what you pretend to be because, in the end, you are what you pretend to be."

And Kurt, as always, says it best.

Bryan Young is the producer of Killer at Large.

 

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Comments

[buddyroo]

Have you ever asked yourself why drugs are cheaper in Canada and other socialized medicine countries, and the ramifications of this for drug costs in America? Basically, the socialized medicine countries are using us and taking us to the cleaners. They all have monopoly bargaining power and essentially dictate prices. The drug companies could never recoup costs if they had to sell to everyone at those prices, so they make it up in the American market. So basically the good old USA is subsidizing the drug costs for the rest of the world. Here is a blog post from a few years ago that explains this:

http://nolan.eakins.net/BlameCanada

Finally, drugs account for only 10% of overall health care costs, but they happen to be the one that is the most visible to people (since they often have to regularly pay a co-pay out of pocket for them) whereas other costs are unseen behind the scenes and paid by insurance but relatively larger. Pharma can be an easy target and scapegoat, but there are bigger fish to fry in reducing health care costs. So maybe the Obama administration is actually wise in this --- they are getting some signficant cost concessions and also, maybe more importantly, the backing and muscle of the pharma industry in helping to wrest savings out of the rest of the 90% health care pie.

[Bryan Young - Huffpost Blogger]

Well, I would prefer taking drug companies to the cleaners.

And there are cases where drug companies sell a years worth of a drug here for $20k a year to a patient, but in Africa it can be manufactured and sold at a tidy profit for $20 a month...

They're taking us to the cleaners. It's time we turned the tables.

[Imperceptus]

Bryan Young accuses Obama of "selling us down the river". Yet the White House today denies that any deal has been made with Big Pharma. For spreading disinformation, Young has been reported.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/Facts-Are-Stubborn-Things/

[Bryan Young - Huffpost Blogger]

I'm not sure if you noticed the question mark or time stamp on the editorial, but this is based on the most current information when I wrote it.

[mom of three]

Bryan -- You failed to mention that Big Pharma completely DERAILED Clinton's Health Care Reform in the 1990's --- Completely derailed it.

There's a lot at stake here.

Personally, I think Obama is playing the game of keeping your friends close.....­and your enemies closer.

[Peter007]

The Industrial Military complex has worked very well for the producers of military equipment and they have kept us SAFE.

The Medical- Industrial complex will give us good health and we will be able to sell our medical products overseas to help with our deficits. Green technology may morph into Medical technology and a partnership between medical suppliers and the government should be looked upon as a good thing.
Not something to be feared.

[muckraker3]

Abandon Ship! Progressives must abandon the Democratic party and start their own. Obama is worse than Bush as he has the added sin of Hypocrisy. Obama's financial reform is run by criminal wall street firms that blew up the western world and are rewarded with taxpayer financed bonuses. Health care reform drawn up by drug companies. Fighting in the courts to protect those who initiated a state run torture program and now stepping up the war machine. Wake up!

[mom of three]

You are not a Progressive. You're previous posts prove as such.

Moving along.....

[freelyb]

Obama's priority is corporate profitability (with a special preference for Goldman Sachs), while the interests of the general population run a distant second in all of his policy changes to date. Congress is down for this approach as well. This guarantees that there will be no real fundamental change in our political dynamics unless something radical happens soon.

The bailout (including other backdoor gifts to the financial industry) and attendant lack of supervision continues to be an unfathomably huge blackmail of the citizenry. Current health care reform involves a similarly weak set of proposals designed primarily to benefit industry. The "cash for clunkers" program? The trade-in offer is good for the purchase of new cars only. And, while we are now in the process of adding 2 billion more dollars to the program, the administration has refused to disclose how the auto industry has profited from it thus far. Why?

We won't go into war issues, or transparency in general, or the abandonment of campaign finance reform or the repealing of Bush tax cuts at time when the rich do way too well. There are many cans of smelly worms, but I don't blame this administration completely. The political climate is simply unworkable and unsustainable. He was handed a mess. I do hold him responsible, though, for making a good faith effort to meaningfully address the rise of the oligarchy. Instead, I see corporate welfare everywhere I look. The banks are ruling us. It's not ok.

[naluca]

One of Obama's major life problems - and he's got a whole list - oi that he always wanted and wants to be
a player, a high roller. He also knows about planning - that is his single strength. He is looking past his presidency, and wants to have himeself and his groupoes well set up. By the way, his groupies are not the idealists he appealed to - but those he considers shakers and movers. Watch those he insults, and those he butters up.

Unless the dems can somehow dump him (I believe they are beginning to understand exactly what it is they bought into), we are going to have to deal with this guy for a generation. And that's bad news for those that counted on him.

[freelyb]

Yeah, he seems to be having way too much fun for the trouble we're in. Makes me wonder how serious he is about the citizenry as well.

[Intelligentia]

Profile: Bryan Young is a filmmaker and writer.

Thanks for your input Bryan. But, your'e wrong.

[Bryan Young - Huffpost Blogger]

What makes you say that in such a preposterously condescending tone?

[kfdan]

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions­."
It's very clear that Obama is thinking that he has to please everyone in the deal and that does not a reformer make! The guy is a nice guy but he's got to have cohones of steel when he's dealing with corporate interests. Big pharma and the insurance giants need to be taken down quite a few notches on the totem pole! Obama may very well be the man but if he can't do that then he will fail in his efforts to help Americans! K Street lobbies need to be out of Washington and the only way to do that is to restrict their capabilities to influence politicians!

[S1m0n]

Folks, healthcare coverage and prescription pricing are TWO issues, not one. And acceptable (albeit not ideal) reform of the former coupled with no change in the latter is nonetheless a net gain.

This administration didn't promise to reform drug pricing, so the claim that Obama's failure to keep this promise he didn't make is wildly over-dramatic and totally unreasonable.

Rome wasn't built in a day. If we have to wait and tackle prescription medicine pricing in the next presidential term after reforming medical insurance in this one, we're still better off than we were.

[edwcorey]

"This administration didn't promise to reform drug pricing"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/09/flashback-obama-promises_n_254833.html

[Emerald1943]

Three little words.....­campaign finance reform!

There, I've fixed the problem!

[2partiessameagenda]

guess u repubs might have to move on to the nexts debate this one is over i think that obama might be passing a health care bill real soon stop playing checkers

[ranchero42]

Your last point was interesting. I usually use the "Mother Night" analogy for pundits; politicians are pretty much irretrievable.

[vanmungo]

The fix is in. The game is over . . . for now. With or without the farcical, enfeebled "public option" buried in the 1,000 lobbyist-authored pages of the Democrats' HR3200 "reform" bill, Business Week reveals (below) that the private insurance companies, not the American public, will be the big beneficiaries of any "reform" legislation emerging from Congress. Obama and the Democrats are poised to deliver a huge boondoggle to the HMO and Big Pharma greedheads who are already bleeding the country white.

(The Business Week covery story linked below is excellent but contains two inaccuracies: single payer is not "government-run" health care--it is publicly financed and privately administered, like Medicare and the Canadian system; also, the public option will not lead to "universal coverage"; the CBO estimates that the pseudo-reform being pushed in Congress will still leave some 33 million Americans uninsured and will do nothing to contain spiraling costs).

http://www.businessweek.com/print/magazine/content/09_33/b4143034820260.htm

For a much briefer summary of Washington's health-care follies, see this succinct essay by the journalist Normon Solomon:

http://www.commondreams.org/print/45494

For a hopeful counterpoint, please read this letter to President Obama from Physicians for a National Health Plan, a group representing 16,000 American doctors. Some 3,500 of them have already signed the letter shown below. Please add your name to it and forward it widely.

https://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/307/t/9577/shop/custom.jsp?donate_page_KEY=5022

[TrueSense]

If the deal were not so bad, it could be tolerated.

I want to know where the HCAN, PNHP, and other consumer and patient rights groups and physicians wanted an effective system were ?

I could tolerate all this a little better if Obama did what he promised, made sure it was not just corporations and lobbyist at the table.

Like many promises he is starting to or has brokne, it appears to be all big business.

[vanmungo]

HCAN has been complicit in all these betrayals. They abandoned the public option very early on and then kept peddling it, even as it was winnowed done to basically nothing. HCAN is nothing but a front group for the pseudo-liberals like Kennedy and Waxman who do the bidding of the health lobby while blowing gales of progressive rhetoric. They are essentially no different in actual policy orientation from the Blue Dogs and Republicans--just more hypocritical in order to retain and confuse their progressive voting base.k

PNHP is a different story. That group has fought continually and unambiguously for single payer, in the teeth of fierce opposition from both the far right and mainstream liberals. See their current open letter and petition to Obama, which I hope you will sign and forward:

https://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/307/t/9577/shop/custom.jsp?donate_page_KEY=5022

Also, to see how the mainstream liberals--even the House Progress Caucus--have conspired in undermining real reform on behalf of the health lobby, see the following:

http://www.pnhp.org/blog/2009/07/20/bait-and-switch-how-the-%E2%80%9Cpublic-option%E2%80%9D-was-sold/

http://www.pnhp.org/blog/2009/07/20/bait-and-switch-how-the-%E2%80%9Cpublic-option%E2%80%9D-was-sold/

[mergina]

Yes, as is the rest of the cesspool that is Washington politics.