Robert Reich says he is appalled that the White House has made a deal to bar the government from negotiating lower drug prices — shades of George W. Bush and his Medicare drug benefit — and that, in return, Big Pharma is spending $150 million for TV ads promoting universal health insurance.
Reich says, “We’re on a precarious road — and wherever it leads, it’s not toward democracy.” He writes:
“The deal between Big Pharma and the White House frankly worries me. It’s bad enough when industry lobbyists extract concessions from members of Congress, which happens all the time. But when an industry gets secret concessions out of the White House in return for a promise to lend the industry’s support to a key piece of legislation, we’re in big trouble. That’s called extortion: An industry is using its capacity to threaten or prevent legislation as a means of altering that legislation for its own benefit. And it’s doing so at the highest reaches of our government, in the office of the President.
“When the industry support comes with an industry-sponsored ad campaign in favor of that legislation, the threat to democracy is even greater. Citizens end up paying for advertisements designed to persuade them that the legislation is in their interest. In this case, those payments come in the form of drug prices that will be higher than otherwise, stretching years into the future. …
“Perhaps the White House deal with Big Pharma is a necessary step to get anything resembling universal health insurance. But if that’s the case, our democracy is in terrible shape. How soon until big industries and their Washington lobbyists have become so politically powerful that secret White House-industry deals like this are prerequisites to any important legislation? When will it become standard practice that such deals come with hundreds of millions of dollars of industry-sponsored TV advertising designed to persuade the public that the legislation is in the public’s interest? (Any Democrats and progressives who might be reading this should ask themselves how they’ll feel when a Republican White House cuts such deals to advance its own legislative priorities.)”
I don’t fully favor the health care bill even though I am ione of the uninsurables that everyone talks about because they talk about limiting health care . They also talk about cutting medicare payments to pay for it . I pay for insurance it is expensive and doesn’t cover much but it beats being un insured . I cannot see into the future so I don’t know what will happen in this country in regard to health care . I have friends in there 90’s who are alive and living on there own because of modern medicine . I am older so IO don’t want to just take asprin if I need heart bypass.