Why did he bring it up ... because it is something we should do. But this was part of his HC plan a few years ago, but it was never pushed after election. Then Pharma ran ads in support of the HC bill, that happened to include no bulk pricing for Medicare, no importation of pharmaceuticals and longer protection for biologics.
How Drug-Industry Lobbyists Got Their Way on Health Care
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6848443&mesg_id=6848443 :shrug:
Carper Publicly Defends Secret PhRMA Deal In Exchange For Support Ads
http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2009/09/23/carper-public-defends-secret-phrma-deal-in-exchange-for-support-ads/"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.
According to Carper the “golden rule” in Congress is that secret back room deals in exchange for advertising buys must be honored. Carper’s statement below ...
I was not involved in negotiations with PhRMA but I believe that the administration was, obviously PhRMA was, and I presume this committee was involved in some way in those negotiations.
And what PhRMA agreed to do through those negotiations is to pay about
80 billion dollars over 10 years to help fill up half the donut hole. That’s my understanding. And they are prepared to go forward and to honor that commitment. As I understand it, the commitment from our colleague Senator Nelson would basically double what was negotiated with PhRMA.
And whether you like PhRMA or not — remember I talked earlier today in our opening statements, I talked about four core values, and one of those is the golden rule, treat other people the way I want to be treated?
I’ll tell you — if someone negotiated a deal with me and I agreed to put up say, 80 dollars or 80 million dollars or 80 billion dollars and then you came back and said to me a couple of weeks later — no no, I know you agreed to do 80 billion and I know you were willing to help support through an advertising campaign this particular — not even this particular bill, just the idea of generic health care reform? No, we’re going to double — we’re going to double what you agreed in those negotiations to do. That’s not the way — that’s not what I consider treating people the way I’d want to be treated.
That just doesn’t seem right to me..."How Drug-Industry Lobbyists Got Their Way on Health Care
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6848443&mesg_id=6848443By Karen Tumulty and Michael Scherer Thursday, Oct. 22, 2009
"...The Generic Nudge
The question before Waxman's committee last summer was this: How many years of monopoly protection should be afforded to biotechnology drugs, known as biologics, before cheaper alternatives are allowed on the market? These miraculous drugs — which differ from traditional, chemical-based pharmaceuticals because they are derived from living matter — are widely regarded as the future of the pharmaceutical industry and, indeed, of medicine itself. While only 20% of drugs on the market today are biologics, it is expected that, with 633 biotechnology medicines in development last year for more than 100 diseases, half the new drugs approved in 2015 will be. Biologics average more than 20 times the cost of traditional drugs: treating breast cancer with a year's worth of the biologic Herceptin can cost $48,000; Remicade, for rheumatoid arthritis, can cost $20,000 annually. For other, rarer diseases, the price of biologic treatments can be as high as $200,000 a year...
...As policymakers look for ways to control health-care costs, the price of biologics is drawing more and more scrutiny. The obvious model for bringing in competition is a 1984 law that Waxman wrote with Republican Senator Orrin Hatch. It lowered the regulatory obstacles that prevented generic drugs from making their way to market. At the time, it was expected that fast-tracking the approval of "bioequivalent" drugs would bring down medical costs by $1 billion a year. But with generics now accounting for more than 70% of prescriptions dispensed in the U.S., "the actual savings have exceeded our wildest expectations," Waxman said in a Sept. 18 speech before the Generic Pharmaceutical Association. "In the last decade alone, generic drugs have saved consumers, businesses and state and federal governments $734 billion."
...The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), though, argued in June that giving biologics makers any period of exclusivity at all could actually stifle innovation. Biologics are so much more complex and expensive to produce than traditional drugs that the barriers to would-be "biosimilar" competitors are already high, the FTC said. Giving biologics further protection — particularly the 12 years of exclusivity that the industry wants — would merely encourage firms to tinker with what they have rather than drive them toward "new inventions to address unmet medical needs."
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