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Drugmakers led by Pfizer (PFE) Inc. agreed to run a “very significant public campaign” bankrolling political support for the 2010 health-care law, including TV ads, while the Obama administration promised to block provisions opposed by drugmakers, documents released by Republicans show.
The internal memos and e-mails for the first time unveil the industry's plan to finance positive TV ads and supportive groups, along with providing $80 billion in discounts and taxes that were included in the law. The administration has previously denied the existence of a deal involving political support.
The documents were released today by Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee. They identify price controls under Medicare and drug importation as the key industry concerns, and show that former Pfizer Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Kindler and his top aides were involved in drawing it up and getting support from other company executives.
“President Obama’s efforts to enlist the support of private industry are exactly what presidents have always done to enact major legislation,” U.S. Representatives Henry Waxman of California and Diana DeGette of Colorado said in a joint statement.
Waxman and DeGette, in their statement, said the Democrats had managed to get more than the $80 billion out of drugmakers described in the memos, putting the figure at $110 billion to $125 billion.
Included in the documents released by the Republicans was an October 2012 e-mail from Bryant Hall, a PhRMA lobbyist,
In it, Hall wrote that the Obama administration had agreed to block a proposal by Democrats in Congress that would let people import pharmaceutical products from outside the U.S., where price controls offer them at lower costs than they can be obtained inside the U.S.
The White House “is working on some very explicit language to kill it in health-care reform,” Hall wrote in an e-mail sent to Kindler and Sally Susman, a current Pfizer executive vice president and head of the New York-based drugmaker’s public policy and communications operations.
The Obama administration aggressively pursued the pharmaceutical industry to make a deal in support of health care reform legislation in mid-2009, according to a series of emails released Thursday by Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
In particular, pharmaceutical industry executives' correspondence confirmed that White House officials agreed to “kill” efforts on Capitol Hill to allow drugs to be imported from other countries — one of the chief legislative priorities of the industry — to get the industry’s backing.
In one email exchange obtained by the committee, a pharmaceutical executive said that then-White House spokesman Robert Gibbs had suggested he would publicly call out PhRMA if it didn’t sign to the deal. Another exchange says the White House threatened to use the president’s radio address to call for rebates for prescription drugs in all of Medicare Part D, a proposition the drug industry strongly opposed.
Reimportation of prescription drugs, an issue that the pharmaceutical industry has repeatedly opposed, played a strong role in the negotiations. While the issue has come up for votes on Capitol Hill numerous times over several years and never become law, the industry has always worried that it will.
Nancy-Ann DeParle, who then led the White House Office of Health Reform, said in one email to a pharmaceutical industry executive that she favored the reimportation policy but agreed to stop pursuing it because the industry was being so constructive on health reform.
“I pushed this,” she wrote to a PhRMA lobbyist, “but [Phil Schiliro, Dana Singiser] and I made [the] decision, based on how constructive you guys have been, to oppose importation on this bill.” She was referring to top White House legislative affairs officials.
White House spokesman Eric Schultz dubbed the investigation “a nakedly political, taxpayer-funded crusade to hurt the president’s reelection campaign.”
“This is the same House committee that has spent, according to one report, over $1 million in taxpayer dollars for the past 15 months looking into baseless allegations on Solyndra — but has done almost nothing to move legislation that would create jobs or grow the economy,” he said.
President Barack Obama is confiding to Democratic donors that he may have to revisit the health-care issue in a second term, a position at odds with his publicly expressed confidence that the U.S. Supreme Court will uphold the Affordable Care Act, according to three Democratic activists.
Originally posted by neo96
reply to post by xuenchen
Wonder if this could be related?
Most likely:
Obama Tells Donors Health-Care Fight May Loom After Court Rules
President Barack Obama is confiding to Democratic donors that he may have to revisit the health-care issue in a second term, a position at odds with his publicly expressed confidence that the U.S. Supreme Court will uphold the Affordable Care Act, according to three Democratic activists.
www.bloomberg.com...
You can bet big pharma at least some of them are his donors.edit on 1-6-2012 by neo96 because: (no reason given)