Drug Makers' Politics Produces a Bitter Pill

[question everything]

The Wall Street Journal

BUSINESS
By ALAN MURRAY

Drug Makers' Politics Produces a Bitter Pill
November 15, 2006; Page A2

Since Election Day, drug stocks have gotten clobbered. Pfizer, Wyeth, Eli Lilly and Novartis have tumbled 5% or more; GlaxoSmithKline, Merck and Johnson & Johnson are down 4% or more; and Bristol-Myers Squibb is down 3.5%. Add it up, and you've got nearly $50 billion in market value wiped out by Democratic victories.

That's the price big pharma is paying for a badly bungled political strategy. For years, the industry operated on the assumption it could get what it wanted out of Washington. Then, when the going got tough, it doubled down on Republicans and ignored a groundswell of public anger over high drug prices. Even ex-congressman Billy Tauzin, the Democrat-turned-Republican who heads the industry's trade group, acknowledges that before he took over two years ago, the group used "a scorched-earth policy" to get its way.

The most conspicuous example of overreach was a line inserted in the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 that prohibited the U.S. government from negotiating prices directly with drug companies. That prohibition was unnecessary; the law created a structure in which private insurers and health plans did the negotiating on the government's behalf. But someone allied with the drug industry -- it's still a little unclear who -- insisted on making the implicit explicit, and in the process, created a campaign issue for Democrats.

(snip)

Truth is, drug companies can't really "negotiate" with the government, any more than a backwoods hiker can negotiate with a 900-pound grizzly bear. With a market share of about 46%, the government would set drug prices, not negotiate them, and then establish "formularies" telling seniors which drugs they could use and which ones they couldn't. Would that make seniors feel better off? I doubt it.


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URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116355141789823288.html (subscription)

[Warpy]

1. I was on ten scrips a month when I got too sick to work in late 2003

and poverty forced me to drop them, taper off them, whatever. I got sicker, but I was down to four, then three.

I inherited enough to take me up to Social Security age, but I still haven't gone back on that fistful of pills. All my drugs are generic now, and that's how I want to keep it.

There's no way I want to go on brand name crap until somebody cleans up those bastards and forces them to stop profiteering on the backs of the sick and uninsured.

[OzarkDem]

2. So the bullies are whining?

Is the WSJ so fearful of a government that has allowed the drug industry to rob taxpayers from finally waking up and doing its duty? And now that big, old, bad government that had its pockets picked by the drug industry is going to retaliate by destroying those good corporate citizens and taking medications away from the poor, sick taxpayers?

Talk about demagoguery. Give me a fucking break. :nopity: