New York Times: "Obama Was Pushed by Big Pharma Industry" E-Mails Suggest, Originally meant Good

Could it be that President Obama had good intentions of just keeping drug costs down when Obamacare idea was being formed? Could it have gotten out of hand between lobbyists and Congress?

It would seem Pharma and Mr. Obama tried to keep cost down? Somehow with Pharma in the works with this I don't think so. Why would they not keep wanting to make obscene profit off of their medications, and then help give a leg up on the Insurance companies. Is it You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours, the case?

Remember when then Speaker Pelosi famously declared that

We have to pass the Bill before you see what's in it

A NY Times article suggested that this may be case.

Or is this just a case of pushing the blame onto someone else for the mess that Obamacare because it's re-election time, will become if the Supreme Court does not over rule the law. Whatever the case if it doesn't we will have a medical mess on our hands.

What do you think ATS?





Peter Baker

WASHINGTON — After weeks of talks, drug industry lobbyists were growing nervous. To cut a deal with the White House on overhauling health care, they needed to be sure that President Obama would stop a proposal intended to bring down medicine prices.

“Throughout his campaign, President Obama was clear that he would bring every stakeholder to the table in order to pass health reform, even longtime opponents like the pharmaceutical industry,” Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director, said Friday. “He understood correctly that the unwillingness to work with people on both sides of the issue was one of the reasons why it took a century to pass health reform.”

On June 3, 2009, one of the lobbyists e-mailed Nancy-Ann DeParle, the president’s health care adviser. Ms. DeParle reassured the lobbyist. Although Mr. Obama was overseas, she wrote, she and other top officials had “made decision, based on how constructive you guys have been, to oppose importation” on a different proposal.

Mr. Obama’s deal-making in 2009 represented a pivotal moment in his young presidency, a juncture where the heady idealism of the campaign trail collided with the messy reality of Washington policy making. A president who had promised to negotiate on C-Span cut a closed-door deal with a powerful lobby, signifying to disillusioned liberal supporters a loss of innocence, or perhaps even the triumph of cynicism.