NY Times: Obama Colluded with Drug Companies to Keep Prices High

Once again the Hope and Change President Obama who had promised to negotiate on
C-Span, is instead found to have cut a closed-door deal with a powerful lobby, Big Pharma..

What ever happened to this?

"I want to put an end to the game playing.”

A new trove of emails shows President Barack Obama’s White House agreed to help drug companies block a proposal to bring down medicine prices so they would back Obama’s healthcare plan.
www.newsmax.com...

The emails show that Big Pharma cut a deal with the White House, they sought
confirmation 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. ...

And so it happened...

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. www.nytimes.com...

Well President Obama, in your own words:

“That’s an example of the same old game playing in Washington.
You know, I don’t want to learn how to play the game better.

www.youtube.com...

The video proves that the promises he keeps are usually small time chicken feed and pigeon splats.

The promises he breaks all have major negative impacts on the majority of citizens.

A Bloomberg Story from May 31st exposed some of this.


Drugmakers Vowed to Campaign for Health Law, Memos Show
It looks like there is some genuine evidence that points to Big Government / Big Corporation "cooperation" when ObamaCare was being "debated" and sealed.

Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee have released documents showing some big drug companies agreed to "press" ObamaCare with things like ads and to run a “very significant public campaign” and pay for the efforts !!!!

This is devastating... The Obama Administration has been denying this !!!

Democrats are in a wild frenzied reactive state and are coming up with all kinds of excuses reasons for this outrage.

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.

Now here this - Now here this: ---- it's ‘Always Done’

“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.

What was more important ?

"Healthcare" or the MONEY ?

Corruption Incorporated has been exposed again !!

A thread from a few weeks ago exposed some very interesting connections to Obama himself on this subject.

Member jdub297 pointed to some more corruption.

post by jdub297 (posted on May-31-2012)

 

It's not as if PhRMA just walked in an offered to help. Duplicitous, Chicago-thug as always, Obama was bad-mouthing big pharmaceuticals in public, while pressuring them in private to "play ball," or else.

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.

W.H. pushed hard for PhRMA health reform deal

Right now, the last thing the W.H. wants to have exposed is that what they were telling the public to sell the Bill was not what they were cobbling together to get what they wanted.

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.

www.politico.com...

Here's an email where a WH staffer appears to be quite pleased with the "help" they are providing PhRMA in exchange for support:

Courtesy of The Washington Examiner
Details of secret PhRMA deal reveal Obama's hypocrisy

Of course, the Obama campaign is "shocked, I tell you, shocked." Not tht this happened, but that it would come out during the campaign:

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.

W.H. pushed hard for PhRMA health reform deal

Who would've guessed?

jw

[/end quote from older thread]


The Nerve of these arrogant vermin Bastards !!
Even with past revelations, they keep on going anyway !!
Obama is Marxist / Corporatist !!

Could this account for the drug shortage also?

ie; Create a problem, then offer a solution?

Originally posted by beezzer
Could this account for the drug shortage also?

ie; Create a problem, then offer a solution?

IMO, YES

It's a scare tactic designed to create a "Stockholm Effect" as well as a Hegelian Dialectic model.

The point of healthcare law "Obamacare" is to give the big insurance companies a monopoly so they can give you crap care with no competition. "Free healthcare" is a lie. How people can think Obamacare is a good thing is beyond me.

reply to post by xuenchen
Forget Fast & Furious, this could be huge!

This is career ending.

Originally posted by beezzer
reply to post by xuenchen

 

Forget Fast & Furious, this could be huge!

This is career ending.

Lately, just about everything Obama and his "supporters" do seems to be career ending

With all the gaffes and outright lies and "leaks" you would almost think they are intentional !!

Let's think about that.

What IF Obama and Michelle have "had it" with Washington ?
(neither one of them are exactly the "fighter" types. they like everything nice and easy)

I would venture a wild guess that if they were to "leave" quietly next January, they could make millions elsewhere.
Like TV shows, book deals, lectures, etc.
Michelle could even have her own show on HGTV
Barack could be a resident guest on Oprah

Think about all the blame they could throw around and get paid big money this time

shame on him. awful story

they are all the same

reply to post by burntheships


No different than President Bush pushing for Tamiflu for bird flu, knowing full well Donald Rumsfeld served as Chairmen of the Board for Gilead Sciences. Rumsfeld's finances grew significantly during this. And I'm sure he shared some of this wealth with good ole Georgie Bush.

Same old story....time and time again.

What the NY Times actually said:

Obama Was Pushed by Drug Industry, E-Mails Suggest

Mr. Obama’s deal-making in 2009 represented a pivotal moment in his young presidency, a juncture where the heady idealism of the campaign trail collided with the messy reality of Washington policy making. A president who had promised to negotiate on C-Span cut a closed-door deal with a powerful lobby, signifying to disillusioned liberal supporters a loss of innocence, or perhaps even the triumph of cynicism.

It's an interesting look into the compromises that make DC, that all politicians end up caving in to. Candidates make big promises, and then realize they cant keep them because the game is rigged.

Happened to many of the House Republicans, too, who were voted in in 2010 on 'small government' and then voted to authorize all kinds of 'giv government' police state legislation like NDAA>

I think we are about to see Obama Hung Out To Dry.......

He and his merry ban of Criminal cohorts about being exposed more and more... without any help from the MSM-of course making them even more irrelevant.

Run back to Hollywood and beg for some more money....

It is clearly the time for the common man to STAND UP and Take Back America... with resounding speed and force-if need be.

I think its about time people realised that the government is being blackmailed by companies. Possibly threatening taking their business abroad leaving more Americans without Jobs. If any of you was president what would you do? You will come into the oval office with good ideas and suddenly you find you cant do it. Everyone blames Obama and yet he is nothing more than a puppet to the companies that threaten to outsource to another country

reply to post by anon72


You really believe that? Take a hard long look at the criminal activity under the previous administration and you'll realize that politicians in Washington are above the law. To believe otherwise suggests a certain degree of naivete. Now I'm not saying I don't agree with you, however, my faith in our government to patrol itself has dwindled substantially and significantly. IMO

Nothing changes in D.C. And it's only getting worse...

Yup, this is the end game guys. Just think of how much the prices of prescription drugs once we can once again start importing, just like we did with Canada remember those days?

What irks me is that people think stuff like this will change once Romney is in office (sorry i had to laugh twice).

The script stays the same ladies and gentlemen. The only thing that changes are the players.

We will all get what we asked for.

We deserve this.

First of all... IS there anyone who is shocked by this news? I think not.

Second of all... Does anyone here believe Mitt Romney would have done something different? I think not.

Does anyone know who would have?? Perhaps a 12 term Congressman who has a history of telling special interest to go screw themselves? Perhaps a 12 term Congressman who has never taken a dime from Big Pharma? Perhaps the same 12 term Congressman who has a medical degree and a medical practice who lobbyist would just not even approach because it was "pointless"?

No one has a right to complain anymore. We had our chance to put in Office and man who would have put a stop to all this crap. Instead the voters got distracted by the little things and did not vote for him. The voters wanted to bicker about abortion, newsletters, and any number of absolutely stupid circus issues. We had our chance... we failed. Now live with it.

Obama Care or Romney Care, it is all the same BS, stealing from we the people to fatten the elites wallets in the Big Pharma and Insurance Industries. No Surprise here.

Originally posted by METACOMET
The point of healthcare law "Obamacare" is to give the big insurance companies a monopoly so they can give you crap care with no competition. "Free healthcare" is a lie. How people can think Obamacare is a good thing is beyond me.

Originally posted by xuenchen
The video proves that the promises he keeps are usually small time chicken feed and pigeon splats.

This new was a brewing last week then, I missed that! Thanks for the links.
Lets look back for more juicy details! The New York Times article I used did leave out some
significant details, yes!

Originally posted by xuenchen
Bloomberg Story
By Drew Armstrong - May 31, 2012

url=http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-31/drugmakers-vowed-to-campaign-for-health-law-memos-show.html

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.

...

Makes you wonder, the lies that the costs of health care are out of control.
well sure they are and no wonder! Thanks to these good ole boys!

reply to post by xuenchen


Thanks for the links to jdubs posts! Those screenshots of the emails, wow.

“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.

www.politico.com...

reply to post by MrWendal


Truer words could not be spoken. You're right. People believe these politicians give a crap about all these stupid issues that keep us distracted from real issues and the truth. People think politicians really care about issues like gay marriage, or abortion, or minimum wage. Yeah, okay. Democrats and republicans alike could care less. At the end of the day, they're sitting back, sipping their scotch and laughing at us. Here's my policy, the more fervent the politician appears, the less I believe him/her. The closer people get to realizing this the better off this country will be. But this country has taken a turn for the worse, over the past sixty years, or post WWII. It's no longer owned by its people but by big corporations and money. Politicians are worse than criminals, our government is corrupt. Already, our government is shifting its focus on Asia-Pacific. We're not even completely out of Iraq, certainly not of Afgahnastan. Let the war-mongering begin! I'm a patriot, a veteran, and a tax payer, and I'm disgusted.