Drug Makers Win Administration Support in Price Dispute - NYTimes.com
On January 22, 2006 in a broadcast of Meet the Press candidate Barack Obama responded to a question about the problem of money in politics with a general response that "money in politics is bipartisan". He went on to give specific examples of lobbyists from specific industries writing the bills which would result in immense profits for their companies. He went on to say:
"The specific problem of inviting lobbyists in who have bundled huge sums of money to write legislation, having the oil and gas company companies come in to write energy legislation, having drug companies come in and write the Medicare prescription drug bill-which we now see is not working for our seniors-those are very particular problems of this administration and this Congress. And I think Jack Abramoff and the K Street Project, that whole thing is a very particular Republican sin."
Now it appears that the last sentence of that paragraph was not true. In stunning contradiction to the conventional wisdom now President Obama has decided that the pharmaceutical companies don't have to obey the law when it is inconvenient for them. In 1992 a drug discount program was created for large hospitals and clinics who serve the poor. The law directed the Secretary of HHS to set maximum prices for drugs sold to certain health care providers. Those hospitals have recently been filing law suits against Big Pharma to recoup their losses from routinely BEING OVERCHARGED for drugs in contravention of the law. The Obama justice department now has filed a friend-of-court brief with the Supreme Court suggesting that only the federal government can enforce the the drug-discount law.
From the NYT's article:
Several Democratic lawmakers expressed surprise at the Justice Department’s position. “The administration had a chance to put health care reform into action by defending the discounted drug program,” said Representative Sam Farr of California. “Instead, it chose to side with the pharmaceutical companies to preserve a loophole that overcharges providers and undermines the president’s efforts to expand access to affordable health care.”
The adds to the numerous reasons I will no longer support the Democratic Party at any level and I will not vote for Obama in 2012.
