Senator Carper Publicly Defends Secret PhRMA Deal In Exchange For Support Ads

[slipslidingaway]

Carper, Baucus and Menendez voted to uphold the prior deal with Pharma.

The reported deal was that if Pharma supported health care reform and kicked in 80 billion over the next ten years the administration would not push to negotiate drug prices in the Medicare program.

When you look back at the Obama/Biden Health Care Plan the proposal was to negotiate prices for ALL Medicare recipients, not just dual eligible seniors. The figure mentioned in the Obama/Biden plan references a study and states that this could save up to 30 billion per year, that number was based on VA rates.

page 5
http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/issues/HealthCareFullPlan.pdf

"...Allow Medicare to negotiate for cheaper drug prices. The 2003 Medicare Prescription Drug
Improvement and Modernization Act bans the government from negotiating down the prices of
prescription drugs, even though the Department of Veterans Affairs’ negotiation of prescription drug
prices with drug companies has garnered significant savings for taxpayers.32

Barack Obama and Joe Biden will repeal the ban on direct negotiation with drug companies and use the resulting savings, which could be as high as $30 billion,33 to further invest in improving health care coverage and quality..."

It appears that we may have moved from a possible 300 billion over 10 years to 80 billion. Maybe the Nelson amendment will be added in the final bill, but that is still far short of what was discussed in the original plan.


http://campaignsilo.firedoglake.com/2009/09/23/carper-public-defends-secret-phrma-deal-in-exchange-for-support-ads/

Video...

Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE) admits Obama admin deal with PHarma includes millions for politics
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJa_kTXad1Q

"In a stunning moment during the Senate Finance Committee markup Sen. Tom Carper defended a secret deal that the White House, Baucus, and PhRMA had reached. The White House has long denied the deal. Carper publicly acknowledges that part of the deal was that PhRMA would run millions of dollars worth of campaign ads in support of health care reform.

...Carper was speaking in opposition to an amendment from Sen. Bill Nelson and Sen. Jay Rockefeller. The amendment mirrors what Henry Waxman did in the House to close the Medicare Part D doughnut hole by requiring drug manufactures to provide rebates for the overcharging of dual eligible Medicare/Medicaid recipients. In July, Debbie Halvorson and Heatlh Shuler authored a letter to Waxman signed by 70 Democrats, asking him a rewrite the bill to " substitute the President's proposal" for his own, which reflected the PhRMA deal.

PhRMA's board approved the $80 billion in price reductions on June 19.

On June 30, the Hill reported that PhRMA began running ads in the districts of vulnerable Democratic House freshmen."


http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/60197-senators-reject-proposal-to-lower-drug-costs

Nelson told reporters Wednesday night, he and other committee Democrats were getting leaned on by the White House and pharmaceutical industry lobbyists to back off.

“Everybody’s asking me to withdraw it except the senior citizens,” Nelson said. Nelson first raised his amendment Tuesday night but committee action was postponed until Thursday.


http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20090924-710034.html

The committee began debating the amendment to health-care legislation on Thursday. Nelson's amendment would allow Medicare to purchase drugs for low-income seniors at the same price that Medicaid pays for the drugs, which would result in an estimated loss of $86 billion over 10 years to drugmakers.

Since the 2003 passage of the Medicare prescription-drug benefit, the government pays Medicare rates for drugs purchased for so-called "dual eligibles" - not the lower Medicaid rate. Nelson's amendment would pay for the drugs at the Medicaid rate...

Under that agreement and Baucus' legislation, drugmakers would already be assessed roughly $80 billion in fees over 10 years..."

[slipslidingaway]

1. Could we save another 220 billion in addition to the 80 billion using VA prices...

this article speaks about some of the different numbers one reads about on this issue.


How Big Pharma's Billy Tauzin conned the White House out of $76 billion.

http://www.slate.com/id/2224621

"...Candidate Obama, citing a paper by Roger Hickey, Jeff Cruz, and Dean Baker of the Institute for America's Future, put the savings at $30 billion a year, which over a decade would be roughly twice the $156 billion savings envisioned by the energy and commerce committee. (Hickey, Cruz, and Baker proposed matching not Medicaid drug prices but those negotiated by the more straightforwardly socialist Veterans Administration.) By this reckoning, Tauzin swindled not $76 billion from President Obama but $220 billion. That's nearly half what the House health reform bill expects to raise with its proposed surtax on incomes above $350,000! ..."


This is the paper cited in the Obama/Biden Health Care Plan...

http://www.ourfuture.org/files/z_historic/medicare/states/NorthCarolina.pdf

"...Legislation to allow negotiation overwhelmingly passed the House in January and will
soon be debated in the Senate. Groups like the AARP, Families USA, the Alliance for
Retired Americans, the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare,
US Action and Campaign for America’s Future have mobilized to help pass this
legislation. However, the pharmaceutical industry – with its annual lobbying budget of
over $100 million – is also mobilizing to protect its excess profits by opposing any
changes to Part D.

In addition to the tremendous savings offered by allowing Medicare to negotiate for
lower prices, there is also an opportunity to save more than $5 billion a year nationally in
administrative costs by allowing seniors to get their benefits directly from Medicare.
Both of these ideas are very popular with the American people, being favored by 85%
and 76% of American adults, respectively. If both enacted, this could save American
seniors and taxpayers more than $35 billion annually..."

[Time for change]

2. It's so sad that our leaders feel that we have to appease the drug industry with hundreds of

billions of dollars just to get their luke-warm support for a watered down health reform bill. Where will this end?

[slipslidingaway]

3. Agreed and where is the media or even the blogs on the discrepancy...

between the plan and the proposed legislation.

:shrug: