Drug Industry to Run Ads Favoring White House Plan, page 1

So, as mentioned in this thread, Obama has sold out to PhARMA in order to secure their support for his Public Option.

As a supporter of the Public Option I have very mixed feelings about this move on behalf of the Obama Admin.

While it does create competition that will drive Health Care Providers to providing better care it goes a long way to letting Big Pharma off the hook on their exploitation of the people of the USA.

To begin with we must acknowledge that

Prescription drug manufacturers, represented by their trade and lobbying group, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), have one of the most powerful and successful lobbies in Congress.

link

Now the agreement made between PhRMA and the Obama administration is that the drug companies will promise $80 Billion in saving on prescriptions here in the USA over a period of ten years.

Sounds good, right?

At face value $80 Billion is a HUGE number and of course if going to be seen as a major improvement. Sadly, once you get past the wrapping the package holds nothing but more crap rolling down hill from the drug companies to US citizens.

What is included in this $80 Billion in savings for US citizens is this:

In fact, the Congressional Budget Office projects that if drug manufacturers were required to give Medicare Part D plans the same rebates they give the Medicaid program, the federal government would save $110 billion over ten years—$30 billion more than PhRMA’s offer with that single change.

link

There also remains the question of whether or not the agreement reached between PhRMA and the Bush Administration still stands as well:

Language was inserted into the law that explicitly prohibited the government from directly negotiating with drug manufacturers for lower drug prices. That has meant billions of dollars in extra profits and an assurance that the government would not interfere in how they set their prices.

Their gain was our loss. As I explained in a previous post, evidence shows that the prices negotiated by the private Medicare Part D plans are substantially higher than prices that government-run programs like the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), Medicare Part B, Medicaid and those in other countries are able to obtain for their patients. The private plans' inability to secure better prices has meant higher costs for people with Medicare and for taxpayers.

link

The $80 Billion, to be honest, is not a gesture of kindness on the part of PhARMA nor a victory for Obama. PhARMA's mission after all is to influence the government to make decisions that at the least do no harm to the Drug Companies more often to improve their standing. Because these drug companies are CORPORATIONS their whole idea of 'progress' and 'success' is based on increased profitability.

This $80 Billion is simply an attempt to buy-off the government and the people in order to save more money that these corporations would loose if say a Public Option were allowed to be created.

Obama has most certainly dropped the ball on this one. What a shame. But that is the way the political ball is rolling. There has been so much money pumped into preventing the creation of Public Option by Big Business that there has been a major uprising of the people of the USA who are deluded into believing they are acting t preserve their 'personal freedoms' when in fact they are protecting the corporations bottom line.

Man politics and politicians are such a convoluted bunch.

In the end the winners seem to still be those with the money, and the rest of us just get to eat cake....

www.nytimes.com
(visit the link for the full news article)