One reason why the 9/12ers got so much air time and the MSM gives any credibility to the teabaggery in general?
July 10, 2009, 12:21 PM ET
TV Networks Go to Bat for Drug Makers (and Themselves)http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2009/07/10/tv-networks-go-to-bat-for-drug-makers-and-themselvesCharles Rangel, the House Ways and Means Committee chairman, is considering
a plan to drop the drug-advertising deduction to raise as much as $37 billion over 10 years toward overhauling the health-care system. Rangel has said his committee needs to come up with $600 billion from new taxes over the decade to help finance planned changes.
Yesterday, the four big television networks — Walt Disney’s ABC, CBS, News Corp.’s Fox and General Electric’s NBC — and the Chamber of Commerce wrote Rangel urging him to drop the idea of ending the tax deduction on drug ads because U.S. advertising supports more than 21 million jobs, including 1.3 million in New York. News Corp. also owns Dow Jones & Co., publisher of Dow Jones Newswires and the Health Blog.
In addition, the Advertising Coalition, which also includes other media companies, sent a separate letter to President Obama asking him to oppose the proposal. (Read the letters to Rangel here and here, and to Obama here.)
“Elimination of pharmaceutical advertising as a business expense would make
it more expensive and inevitably would reduce the amount of this advertising,” wrote the networks in the letter to Rangel. Because the tax deduction currently applies to all businesses, ending it for pharma “would send a discordant note to other businesses in America if we begin using the Tax Code to favor or disfavor one form of advertising over another.”
It’s not the first time that advertisers and media have gotten involved in supporting Big Pharma. In 2007, their lobbying efforts
helped water down provisions to restrict drug-ad marketing in an FDA bill.