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Gray Matter
Congress is On Drugs, Again!
I just took my three medicines, plus vitamin C. My wife swallowed everything but the refrigerator, and she’s the healthy partner. Chances are that by now you’ve taken your pills, too.
My point being, we who have white thatch on top, depend upon costly pharmaceutical aids to keep us well. Employer-provided insurance, boasting a generous drug benefit, allows the Lindemans this privilege.
Not every American is so fortunate. Estimates are one in every four senior women and men either skips drug doses, or neglects to fill the Rx in the first place because the cost is too high. Meantime, on the far side of the Canadian border those drugs you and I regularly purchase sell for 40 percent less.
“How can this be?” My answer: because the Canadian government imposes price controls and bargains with drug manufacturers to keep prices low, or lower than the business suits wish.
What of our government, and congress in particular? Well, this bunch is out to lunch, metaphorically, and when business is on the docket the legal drug pushers are in command. Consider, these facts:
** The pharmaceutical industry has by far the largest lobby in Washington, with some 675 lobbyists busy at a cost estimated at more than $91 million per year.
** The roster of lobbyists includes some 26 former members of congress and another 300-plus who served on congressional staffs, or were otherwise connected with government. Aside: Two former chairmen of the Republican National Committee are among the lobbyists, according to Dr. Marcia Angell, author of “The Truth About The Drug Companies” (Random House; 2004)
Dr. Angell writes, “No one seems to be concerned about the obvious conflicts of interest.”
Once editor in chief of the prestigious “The New England Journal of Medicine” and no neophyte to the government scene, Dr. Angell strips bare the pharmaceutical industry’s motivations. She describes contributions of $85 million to political campaigns in 1999-2000. (FYI: 80 percent of this money went to Republican candidates.)
If it sounds as though the pharmaceutical companies have both a war plan and a war chest, you’re correct. Four summers ago, reporters for The New York Times collected confidential documents proving big PhRMA (the industry group) meant to buy influence, with $500,000 budgeted to “block the influx of drugs from Canada.”
This money, plainly, was intended to see that you had difficulty buying less expensive medicines from Canada through the mails.
Now, why do I choose today to recall these damning indictments? Well, because just the other Wednesday, while headlines told of unspeakable tragedy at Virginia Tech University, the Senate in effect killed a bill that would have permitted Medicare to negotiate for lower cost medicines.
This, of course, represents good business practice, unless a drug manufacturer pays your salary. Indeed, it’s policy routinely followed by the Veterans Administration. One protesting senator asked publicly, “Wal-Mart can negotiate; why in the world shouldn’t Medicare be able to do that?”
The answer, as all in government know: it’s against the law for Medicare to negotiate. The 2003 Medicare Modernization Act (Part D) forbids bargaining. Remember how that flawed bill passed in the dead of night, by the narrowest of margins in the House of Representatives (220-215), and then all but guaranteed Big Pharma profits estimated at $139 billion over the next eight years?
The bill further forbids citizens from importing drugs made in the USA and sold more cheaply in other countries. “Is this our democracy’s finest hour?” I asked at the time, and added: “I suggest otherwise.”
Now, plainly, what is underway in the corridors of power is a well-funded shadow campaign to take Medicare out of government hands and transfer it to private industry, that industry being, largely, the incomparably arrogant drug industry.
The relevant question remains: “Are we, the tribal elders, going to allow rats to eat our cheese?”
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Outrageous Associations
