Democracy for Vancouver

THE FOLLOWING IS TAKEN AS IT APPEARS FROM THE BOOK "HOSTILE TAKEOVER" by David Sirota

                         The following is from the chapter on "Prescription Drugs"

     "Higher prices mean higher executive salaries and more campaign contributions. Those contributions make sure the power of Congress is used not to protect the consumer but to make sure every ordinary citizen on Earth pays astronomical prices for medicines.

     The proof is everywhere you look. In 2000, for example, an anonymous U.S. Senator added a provision extending the patent for Claritin to a massive unrelated bill. The allergy drug was making Schering-Plough roughly $2.7 billion a year thanks to patents that prevented a cheaper generic version from being produced. When the nonprofit group Seniors Coalition offered a $1,000 reward to anyone who would reveal the identity of "Senator Anonymous" Utah's Orin Hatch (R) stepped forward and admitted he was the perpetrator.

     As chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee that oversees patents, Hatch is perennially among the top recipients of drug industry cash and perks.

     The same thing happened three years later during the debate over the new Medicare bill. Democrats proposed letting federal officials use Medicare's bulk purchasing power to negotiate lower prices for prescription drugs. It seemed like a simple idea —- if you're buying medicine for millions of Medicare recipients, those big volume purchases can be leveraged to negoiate discounts. It's the same rationale that companies like Costco and Walmart and federal agencies like the Department of Veterans Affairs use to secure discounts up to 50 percent off the price of goods they purchase. In fact, almost every other industrialized nation on the planet does this kind of thing to save money.

      But to politicians who don't think the drug industry's 18 percent profit margin is enough, money trumps everything. Republicans soon slipped in a provision prohibiting federal officials from negotiating lower prices. Taxpayers got screwed in the deal, but those doing the screwing made out like bandits. The drug industry will make hundreds of billions of dollars off the final legislation — including an additional $139 billion just from the provision that bans Medicare from negotiating lower prices. Those profits will surely trickle down to people like John McManus, the House Republicans' chief health policy expert who was hired as a PhRMA lobbyist four months after the Medicare bill passed.   (For a reported 2 million dollars a year)

     They will also line the pockets of people like Tom Scully, who left his position as Medicare administrator to become (surprise!) a lobbyist for the drug industry right after the bill was signed."

Now we are faced with one of our own, Congrssman Brian Baird, selling out to the health insurance industry. His proposal is in his latest newsletter. His plan would make it mandatory for all Americans to have private health insurance. It would eliminate insurance programs currently being offered by employers. Ask yourselves who profits from this? The answer is the large corporations and the health insurance industry. I am sure that one day soon we will see Mr. Baird employed by some lobbying outfit making millions off his treason.