Qui Bono?
Posted on | August 26, 2006
Medicare Part D, written by and for the pharmaceutical corporations, amounted to a huge giveaway to the tune of billions. If you have any doubts as to the bill’s authorship, note that it removes the government’s power to negotiate drug prices, per Rep. Waxman’s (D-CA) report:
The prices offered by the ten Medicare drug plans are substantially higher than the prices negotiated by the federal government. For the ten Medicare drug plans, the average price for a one-month supply of each of the ten drugs is $1,158. In comparison, the price negotiated by the federal government for the same drugs is just $630. In percentage terms, the prices offered by the Medicare drug plans are 84% higher than the federally negotiated prices…
And who in Congress thought that American seniors could afford such a price hike? Conflicts of interest abounded:
The chairman of the Commerce Committee, Representative Billy Tauzin (R-La.), coauthored the bill while negotiating a $2-million-per-year job as a lobbyist for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the drug industry’s trade organization. The top Republican aide on a subcommittee involved in writing the legislation also left his position soon afterward to lobby for PhRMA. Thomas Scully, the administration’s top Medicare official, deliberately understated the program’s projected cost by $134 billion, and when the chief actuary of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) objected, Scully reportedly threatened to fire him if he shared his true estimate with Congress. Soon after the legislation passed, Scully resumed his career as a health care–industry lobbyist.
When the conference report was brought to the House for a vote, members were given less than one day to read the 850-page bill, a violation of House rules. When the vote was called at almost 3 a.m., voting Democrats stood unanimously with 22 Republicans in opposing the legislation. Had the vote been gaveled down in the customary 15 minutes, the bill would not have passed. So the Republican leadership held the vote open for a record three hours while attempting to change the outcome — through intimidation and other tactics that, again, violated House rules. Finding itself with a narrow lead at 5:53 a.m., the Republican leadership immediately brought the vote to a close.
Many abuses undoubtedly took place that night. Representative Nick Smith (R-Mich.) later revealed what may have been the worst: that former Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) and Representative Candice Miller (R-Mich.) tried to bribe him with political favors to change his vote — an infraction for which the House Ethics Committee later admonished them. Through these means, the Republican leadership succeeded in passing a bill whose goal was, according to Representative Bill Thomas (R-Calif.), to “end Medicare as we know it.”
Thomas’s words proved as prophetic as they were ironic. Part D works better for the pharmaceutical and insurance industries than for beneficiaries. Drug-industry lobbyists worked to prevent the reimportation of cheaper medications from Canada and to add patent protection against generic drug makers. Independent analysts predicted that with such victories, the bill would increase drug-industry profits by $139 billion over the next eight years.
Our little experiment in representative plutocracy is being paid for by those who can least afford it. Which rich old white man claims to look out for your interests?
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