Tauzin's Pharma Lobbying Efforts "Blessed" By White House

[Riverman]

Source: Huffington Post from LA Times

In today's Los Angeles Times Tom Hamburger reports on the extent to which former Louisiana Congressman Billy Tauzin has managed to integrate himself, and the interests of the lobbying group he heads -- the Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers Association (PhRMA) -- into the health care debate. The Times piece practices a studied neutrality, but I can't see how any proponent of meaningful health care reform can possibly read this piece and not conclude that President Barack Obama has essentially given away the store:

As a candidate for president, Barack Obama lambasted drug companies and the influence they wielded in Washington. He even ran a television ad targeting the industry's chief lobbyist, former Louisiana congressman Billy Tauzin, and the role Tauzin played in preventing Medicare from negotiating for lower drug prices. Since the election, Tauzin has morphed into the president's partner. He has been invited to the White House half a dozen times in recent months. There, he says, he eventually secured an agreement that the administration wouldn't try to overturn the very Medicare drug policy that Obama had criticized on the campaign trail.

"The White House blessed it," Tauzin said. Yikes! What's been blessed? Something that reeks with the acrid aroma of a Faustian bargain. The pharamaceutical industry "has pledged $80 billion in cost savings over 10 years to help pay for it." What did Tauzin get in return?

For his part, Tauzin said he had not only received the White House pledge to forswear Medicare drug price bargaining, but also a separate promise not to pursue another proposal Obama supported during the campaign: importing cheaper drugs from Canada or Europe. Both proposals could cost the industry billions, undermine its ability to develop new cures and, in the case of imports, possibly compromise safety, industry officials contend.


Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/04/tauzins-pharma-lobbying-e_n_250964.html

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I thought Candidate Obama said that when he got elected, he would not let the lobbyists run the White House! Now, we see that President Obama, has one of the biggest and best funded lobbyist - Big Pharma, run by former Louisianna Congressman - Billy Tauzin at a salary of $2 million a year, spending over $6 million per quarter this year to make sure the White House does not get in the way of Big Pharma. The result, citizens of the United States will continue to pay the highest costs for perscription drugs on the planet and they will make it very difficult, if not impossible to buy drugs at more reasonable prices from our neighbor, socialist Canada or from other countries!

Change You can Count on, Mr President! Change for Big Pharma - tons of change! Thank you so much!

Ya Bastard!

[MannyGoldstein]

1. Obama Doesn't Get It.

He needs to pass health care reform that actually makes things better. I suppose that he has a cute little plan to not actually have it take effect until after the 2012 elections, which will allow him to get re-elected. But it will take effect some time - and if it sucks, it will once again delay real reform for decades, and help the crazy Right get back into power.

I'd rather have no reform than garbage reform. At least then we can blame the overt and covert (Blue Dog) Rethugs and hopefully remove them from office so we can get actual reform in a couple of years.

[Metta]

2. Pragraph 4, scare from the industry. Only they can develop cures & insure safety.

Hogwash. We pay the cost, take the risk and they get the profits. They're the lords' we're the serfs.

[Laelth]

3. I hate that I must recommend this thread.

I hoped for better.

:dem:

-Laelth