PhEE, PhIE, PhOE PhARMA

PhARMA's set to spend $150 million pushing healthcare reform this fall, but before we begin to mock that, let's put it in perspective.

Comparison shopping? PhARMA's holding a sale.

(HuffPo)

"By comparison, President Obama’s presidential campaign spent about $236 million on television commercials while the campaign of the Republican candidate, Senator John McCain of Arizona, spent about $126 million."

— David D. KirkPatrick,
NYTimes

Read More.

AMERICA, this day in history: Along with the AMA and the nurses association, plus PhARMA and 60% of the American people, Obama's got the hospitals and insurance companies backed up in the corner... with birth certificate conspiracy goons and goose-booting pantaloon troops from the 9/12 BOO! movement... all of them arguing the finer points of apocalyptic birther theory.

"Few expect the opponents of the health care overhaul to muster as much advertising muscle as its backers, including sympathetic business groups, labor unions and ideological allies. The drug makers stand to gain millions of new customers from the expansion of health care coverage."

Through two tediously eerie years, tenaciously trying all that any kook can cough up, Glenn Beck's Clamity Players have nothing but this laughably forged birth certificate from a country that didn't even exist at the time of Obama's birth. That's pretty much the basis of their plan to reform healthcare, but how do they keep a DOA like that alive?



Hearing of euthanasia and rumor of euthanasia, an ugly mob with pitchforks are goaded by the Faux Noose-Limbaugh-Drudge echo network, into mimicking verbaim mockery that Steve Doocy introduces to his morning listener to-do lists each day.

Something from the PhORSES Mouth:

"Our board has agreed to make a significant investment in support of comprehensive reform,” he said. 'Our August plan is pretty much in place, but we have not finalized all the details of the fall campaign.'"

— Ken Johnson, spokesman for PhRMA

Meanwhile, there's the 9/12ers emailing prophetic doomsday theory to our mothers regarding the imminent outbreak of civil war, apocalyptic birther rumor, imploring that we stock up on ammo, medicine, and begin a plan to ration food and generally weather in for the Rapture.

That's the plan.

Meanwhile, on the left, things are just as circumspect, although from there the fascists could be just about anybody... not only the fascists.

Robert Reich asks that "Democrats and progressives should ask themselves how they'll feel when a Republican White House cuts such deals to advance its own legislative priorities."

Quid quo pro? The Pros here are Big Pharma.

(Zach Trenholm, Salon)

"I'm a strong supporter of universal health insurance, and a fan of the Obama administration. But I'm appalled by the deal the White House has made with the pharmaceutical industry's lobbying arm to buy their support."

— Robert Reich, Salon

Read more Robert Reich.

Although I generally agree with Bobby, he's a little bit scattered in his message, saying at first that it's 1994 all over again but then pointing out that it's not. If, in the first case, it were the other way around, if Obama promised to give the pharmaceutical industry $80 billion in exchange for its effort to stop reform, THAT would be business as usual.

Something from Reich's Readers:

"And it’s a nebulous $80B. They could raise prices by $80B and then roll them back and claim savings. Sweet."

— One of Reiche's readers

Last time, the prescription bill GAVE $1.2 trillion to the industry... instead of taking $80 billion from them... but Reich is right; it's undemocratic if the details are not publically available, "when an industry gets secret concessions out of the White House in return for a promise to lend the industry's support to a key piece of legislation.

"That's called extortion: An industry is using its capacity to threaten or prevent legislation as a means of altering that legislation for its own benefit. And it's doing so at the highest reaches of our government, in the office of the president."

But... because he had that "front-row seat in 1994 when Big Pharma and the rest of the health-industry complex went to battle against reform," Reich can tell us firsthand "how big and effective the onslaught can be". He says, "I appreciate Big Pharma's support this time around, and I like it that the industry is doing the reverse of what it did last time, and airing ads to persuade the public of the rightness of the White House's effort."

Reich doesn't want to be puritanical about it, because the White House deal with Big PhARMA may be "a necessary step to get anything resembling universal health insurance," but if that's the case, he says, "our democracy is in terrible shape.

He may be more optimistic than I am, maybe even more naïve, to think we're not already that far gone. I believe we are, and the reception reform has had in the Senate is indicative of it, especially after they had total political cover after the election to pass reform along the lines of what was debated during the 2008 election.

As much as this deal has been laid at Obama's feet, that's not the way the story was told. The agreement was reached, first, with the Senate.

"Mr. Tauzin said the administration had approached him to negotiate. 'They wanted a big player to come in and set the bar for everybody else,' he said. He said the White House had directed him to negotiate with Senator Max Baucus, the business-friendly Montana Democrat who leads the Senate Finance Committee.

"Mr. Tauzin said the White House had tracked the negotiations throughout, assenting to decisions to move away from ideas like the government negotiation of prices or the importation of cheaper drugs from Canada. The $80 billion in savings would be over a 10-year period. '80 billion is the max, no more or less,' he said. 'Adding other stuff changes the deal.'"

"After reaching an agreement with Mr. Baucus, Mr. Tauzin said, he met twice at the White House with Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff; Mr. Messina, his deputy; and Nancy-Ann DeParle, the aide overseeing the health care overhaul, to confirm the administration’s support for the terms."

Democratic principles aside, such as they are for the moment, if their deal is that the administration, in exchange for industry support for reform, will not push Congress for a bigger discount than $80 billion from PhARMA... I'm not all that outraged. The industry's support is virtually priceless. If the LA Times version of the story, that PhARMA received "a White House pledge to forswear Medicare drug price bargaining," what does it mean to forswear?

If in exchange for industry support the administration promised to lobby against a bigger discount than $80 billion from PhARMA, then I'm more specifically bothered.

If in exchange for industry support the administration promised to VETO any legislation that is more tough than $80 billion on PhARMA, then I'm inconsolably bothered... that is UNLESS my bottom-of-the-barrel requirement is met, a federal-payer health care plan on par with federal employee benefits... one that is blind to pre-existing conditions.

I don't even really care what the private industry does if there is my option. If legislation also closes the prescription donut hole, in addition to providing my blind federal-payer plan, I might get over feeling sold out.

Is that the same as selling out?

And Dr. S chides:

"...incredible naivety ...does he really think that they COULD raise prices by $80 billion, rather than that they WILL raise them by 100, 150, 200 or more... what the heck, and then reduce them by $80. Not rocket science.

"If Big Pharm is bankrolling the pro Obama care plan, why should WE then give money or support to it too?"

— Dr. S

If Big Pharm is bankrolling the pro Obama care plan, why should WE then give money or support to it too?

For some reason, the proprietor class is steadfast in the belief that people should pay for things, and we see it even in shady shenanigans like these, where they fake this largess while passing the cost of it onto us. Thus, someone else is always going to absorb this cost, either through taxes, fees, premiums, penalties, or while paying for products at the point of sale.

Former Gov. Sarah Palin stirred up controversy last week by suggesting on her Facebook page that people like her parents and Down syndrome son might have to appear before 'Obama's "death panel" so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their "level of productivity in society," whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil."

And we keep arguing about these things, every time someone moves a shell, from tax, to fee, to premiums, then to penalties, and now at the cash register, again and again, to dispel the latest constituents outraged that they should pay for healthcare reform. The buck only stops at the consumer, who again screams for real reform.

The end user is targeted, always, as the long-tail, deep pocket, whether we miss the shady details of a deal like this or openly gloat over record jury awards for the pain and suffering cause by industry malpractice. The cost is ALWAYS passed down. Where else would the money come from, except the investors, who, arguably, could solve all our problems by investing in social conscience?

Read more from Robert Reich at Salon.