Drug industry pushed Obama on health overhaul, e-mails suggest

[Contrary1]

Wow...just wow. Any other comment would probably end up with my eating some granite.

"WASHINGTON — After weeks of talks, drug industry lobbyists were growing nervous. To cut a deal with the White House on overhauling health care, they needed to be sure that President Obama would stop a proposal intended to bring down medicine prices.

On June 3, 2009, one of the lobbyists e-mailed Nancy-Ann DeParle, the president’s health care adviser. Ms. DeParle reassured the lobbyist. Although Mr. Obama was overseas, she wrote, she and other top officials had “made decision, based on how constructive you guys have been, to oppose importation” on a different proposal.

Just like that, Mr. Obama’s staff signaled a willingness to put aside support for the reimportation of prescription medicines at lower prices and by doing so solidified a compact with an industry the president had vilified on the campaign trail. Central to Mr. Obama’s drive to remake the nation’s health care system was an unlikely collaboration with the pharmaceutical industry that forced unappealing trade-offs.

The e-mail exchange three years ago was among a cache of messages obtained from the industry and released in recent weeks by House Republicans — including a new batch put out Friday detailing the industry’s advertising campaign supporting Mr. Obama’s health care overhaul. The broad contours of his dealings with the industry were known in 2009, but the newly public e-mails open a window into the compromises underlying a health care law now awaiting the judgment of the Supreme Court..."

More of the same: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/47745646/ns/politics-the_ne... /

[slipslidingaway]

1. President Obama disagrees with Candidate Obama ...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

Candidate Obama speech (late 2008) in Newport News, Va.

"And we are tired of watching as year after year, candidates offer up detailed health care plans with great fanfare and promise only to see them crushed under the weight of Washington politics and drug and insurance lobbying once the campaign is over.

That is not who we are, that is not who we have to be, enough is enough, it time for us to change."

This part is from the 4:55 mark so the detailed plan by the candidate that could save up to 300 billion was replaced by a deal with the lobbyist Tauzin for 80 billion. The study referenced in the Obama plan may or may not account for the increased enrollment by the baby boomers, 46 million to 79 million over the next twenty years.

Tauzin got a good deal IMO, Medicare and seniors not so much.


From the Obama/Biden HC plan ----

"...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 (per year),33 to further invest in improving health care coverage and quality."


Obama's $80 Billion Deal with Pharma Is a Very Bad Deal for Us
By William Greider

http://www.alternet.org/health/141856

"The White House has cut a deal with Big Pharma that smells like the same old rotten politics that candidate Obama regularly denounced.
August 8, 2009..."


Could we save another 220 billion in addition to the 80 billion using VA prices...
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/slipslidingaw...

"...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! ..."


From the posted article, I have no idea of where the lower 100 billion number came from. Obama's own HC plan spoke of 300 billion over 10 yesrs and then made a deal for 80 billion.



"A public confrontation was averted and an agreement announced, negotiated down to $80 billion from $100 billion. “We got a good deal,” Mr. Hall wrote.