The Whole Delivery

This should give a lot of people some sort of glee . Billy Tauzin, the former Louisiana congressman, is resigning as president of the drug industry trade group Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America amid internal disputes over its pact with the White House to trade political support for favorable terms in the proposed health care overhaul. As the industry’s top lobbyist, Mr. Tauzin brokered the deal with the White House and Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate finance committee, last summer to limit the drug industry’s total costs under the proposed health care overhaul to $80 billion over 10 years. And guess what was a contributing factor to him pulling a Palin? Mr. Tauzin’s departure is the latest unexpected fallout of the Republican upset in the Massachusetts Senate race, which abruptly transformed the health care overhaul from a near-inevitability to a daunting cause. The strong possibility of (meaningful) reconciliation in the health insurance bill coupled now w...

Remember this Ad from the campaign trial: And the transcript for those who can't hear the ad: "The pharmaceutical industry wrote into the prescription drug plan that Medicare could not negotiate with drug companies. And you know what, the chairman of the committee who pushed the law through went to work for the pharmaceutical industry making $2 million a year. Imagine that. That's an example of the same old game-playing in Washington. I don't want to learn how to play the game better. I want to put an end to the game-playing." Well, from Digby and David Sirota (no matter how you feel about him), I can't believe I am doing this, but I am linking to an actual credible Washington Examiner article that is pretty damning White House visitor logs dumped late in the week between Christmas and New Year's Eve show that Billy Tauzin, the top lobbyist for the prescription drug industry and once a favorite target of Barack Obama, visited the White House at least 11 ti...

The last effort to make a poor bill better is currently being debated. But as David Dayen notes the fix is in : On the floor right now, several Democrats are highlighting this red herring of a safety issue, citing the FDA Commissioner’s letter that they could not assure the safety of imported drugs. Hysterically, Sen. Kay Hagan (D-NC) is talking up the issue of counterfeit drugs moving into the US, which is almost entirely attributable to the fact that drugs are too expensive in this country, something reimportation WOULD HELP SOLVE. We’re talking about drugs made in the exact same factories under the exact same processes being sold at massive discounts in other countries because of their willingness to negotiate down prices. We don’t do that, and it’s somewhat absurd to piggyback on the efficient systems in other countries instead of doing the bargaining ourselves. But to allow Americans to pay $106 billion more dollars over 10 years for prescription drugs because of a clumsy argument...

It is pretty amazing how the "spineless" label gets placed on Senate Majority leader Harry Reid, when the thing most concerning about him is his sneaky corporate ways. The latest evidence that you are about to read further exhibits the treachery he can bring on the nation. First, take a look at this : A loophole in the Senate health care bill would let insurers place annual dollar limits on medical care for people struggling with costly illnesses such as cancer, prompting a rebuke from patient advocates. The legislation that originally passed the Senate health committee last summer would have banned such limits, but a tweak to that provision weakened it in the bill now moving toward a Senate vote. But this was suppose to never happen, and Obama certainly didn't want that at all: When President Obama gave his speech on health care on September 10 , he promised that there would be no limit on lifetime benefits under the health care bill: They will no longer be able to plac...