Drug Makers to Back Baucus Plan With Ad Dollars

The drug industry’s trade group plans to roll out a series of television advertisements in coming weeks specifically to support Senator Max Baucus’s health care overhaul proposal, according to an industry official involved in the planning.

The move would be a follow-up to the deal that drug makers struck in June with Mr. Baucus and the White House. Under that pact, the industry agreed to various givebacks and discounts meant to reduce the nation’s pharmaceutical spending by $80 billion over 10 years.

Shortly after striking that agreement, the trade group — the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, or PhRMA — also set aside $150 million for advertising to support health care legislation.

President Obama has cited the deal with the group as signifying a new era of cooperation. But some critics say the advertising fund could be wielded against alternative approaches to health care legislation. Some House Democrats, including Henry A. Waxman of California, are seeking drug industry givebacks not covered in the deal with Mr. Baucus and the White House.

Up to now, the trade group, led by former Representative Billy Tauzin, a Republican from Louisiana, has contributed $12 million toward an advertising campaign coordinated by a coalition called Americans for Stable Quality Care. Early advertisements focused on general subjects like “Eight Ways Reform Matters to You.”

But an industry official involved in the discussions said the group and its advertising money would now be aimed specifically at the approach being pushed by Mr. Baucus, Democrat of Montana and chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.

The group’s advertising spending has been criticized by people who say drug makers should be forced to make deeper concessions than they have agreed to with Mr. Obama and Mr. Baucus.

James Love, director of the liberal nonprofit research group Knowledge Ecology International, is one of those critics. “Essentially what the U.S. got was not $80 billion,” he said, “but $150 million in Obama campaign contributions.”

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The $80 billion offter by the drug companies over ten years is chump change for them. Pfizer recently agreed to a record “$2.3 billion settlement” to resolve criminal and civil liability for illegally promoting certain drugs. Drug companies are gouging Americans (including seniors) while other countries have negotiated better prices. We are morons for allowing this.

The support of Baucus’s plan by Big Pharma means that the drug companies are the winners and the American people are the losers. Baucus is doing the bidding for the health industry and of course has been rewarded with millions in campaign contributions. It’s time to stop the madness.

Sen. Baucus — We need a strong public option. The CBO has estimated that a public option would save $150 billion over ten years.

You gotta love the drug companies. They overcharge patients, helping to push many into bankruptcy, and then pay off politicians with their patient’s dollars.

Does anyone else think it is strange that drug companies are allowed to pay for advertising on political issues?

I though the country was run by and for individuals, not huge corporations. Did I miss something?

Pour your ill-gotten gains on an unworthy politician and watch the nation continue to suffer as a result.

Our “democracy” is sick…it has become corporatized & corporate owned by mercanaries such as Tauzin & Baucus.
I don’t doubt that the notoriously pro-corporate Baucus let Tauzin write much of the health industry friendly bill emerging from his committe in exchange for ad dollars, which could help the bill become law.
With the supreme court become increasingly radical, we need a Constitutional ammendment to ban corporate bribes to our elected reps.

Of course PhRMA will support Sen. Baucus. He is their man. His mission is to kill any hope of real reform. Even the already compromised public option is now teetering and more likely the American people will end up paying into the corrupt private insurance industry via mandated coverage but no price control, just as the Romney plan for the state of Massachusetts. Healthcare in Massachusettes costs one third more than any other state, and the price of insurance is not regulated.

Corporate democrats are the only hindrance to healthcare reform.

People need to know about this. I hope the NYTimes will have an editorial pointing to this and the fact that the “blue dog” dems & repubs are in the pockets of the health-ins. and drug companies.

This is from a NY Times articles:

Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, voiced this sense of bailout fatigue in June when he said, “We have the takeover of the auto companies and banks and A.I.G. and student loans — and now health care.”

This is so outrageous! Who came to the federal government begging for assistance? Wall Street and AIG. And now that the American people have spent more than $700 billion on Wall Street, we’re told by a Republican he has bailout fatigue?!?! Now that the federal government wants to do something positive for the American people, the Republicans have “BAILOUT FATIGUE”?!?!?!

We-the-people are being overwhelmed by greed – for money and for power. Corporations buy politicians and both gain in dollars and power while the rest of us are driven deeper into the black hole of despair.

How on Earth are we going to be able to struggle up out of this? Each day we are driven away and deeper. We are rapidly becoming the world’s next feudal society.

I’m a Repub, yet I also feel that the time for national health care is here; however, a lot of Pres. Obamas other agendas are anathema to me. And I’m not talking about the original meaning.

Without a government public option in the mix, any other reforms will become meaningless. They can, and likely will, be written away with new policies, as anything agreed to in a contract is binding, legal or not. Exchanges and coops will prove themselves inoperable, as the insurance companies will be the ones setting their rates without a controlling factor that a government run public option would provide.

If this is what they’re going to do they might as well let it go down in flames. if this passes, it will take everyone else down, especially those outside the current system.

Is there a legal case for those with pre-existing conditions not currently covered to sue the government for paid premium Medicare access?

SIngle Payer is the prescription to our myriad ills.

I live in California and received a very expensive mailing paid by PHaRMA with Diane Feinstein’s face on the front.

I literally couldn’t tell if they wanted me to call to remind Feinstein that PHRMA had big campaign contributions coming to her, or to scare her that they could fund her opposition. (With Feinstein I fear it’s the former not the latter.)

We’re being fleeced of $350-450 billion a year by private insurers on the front end. On the back end deals are being struck with the interest groups such as drug makers.

I’m a medical device entrepreneur yet I don’t see the medical benefit for the American people in these “deals.”

This is proof that Max Baucus is in the pocket of Big Pharma.

Baucus has to be removed as chair of the Senate Finance committee!! Why haven’t the Dems done this? He is not serving the interests of the Democratic party! He has to go!

THE PhRMA $150 M “bribe”, oops, AKA support of Obamacare ————

Obama already destroyed a $300 B 10 year drug cost savings for Part D Medicare with his corrupt drug deal with PhRMA.

“In striking the bargain with PhRMA, Obama broke a not-insignificant campaign promise (“Obama will repeal the ban on direct negotiation with drug companies and use the resulting savings … to further invest in improving health care coverage and quality”).

Candidate Obama, citing a paper (//www.globalaging.org/health/us/2007/waste.pdf) by Roger Hickey, Jeff Cruz, and Dean Baker of the Institute for America’s Future, put the savings at $30 billion a year, which over a decade would be roughly twice the $156 billion savings envisioned by the energy and commerce committee. (Hickey, Cruz, and Baker proposed matching not Medicaid drug prices but those negotiated by the more straightforwardly socialist Veterans Administration.)

By this reckoning, Tauzin swindled not $76 billion from President Obama but $220 billion. That’s nearly half what the House health reform bill expects to raise with its proposed surtax on incomes above $350,000!”. Timothy Noah in Slate //www.slate.com/id/2224621/

So we citizens now will get a regressive, pork laden Baucus bill, ——–and the Baucus plan is the Obama plan————–a bill that is predicted to hurt the working poor, middle class, the disabled and single women, a bill that is filled with Obama/Baucus giveaways to special interests like big PhRMA and insurance companies that preempts true cost savings, instead. Obama is using the handy Medicare budget “waste” as a piggy bank for offsets…

And when Obama mentions waste in Medicare it is sometimes not clear if he believes the seniors are the “waste” or its really some Medicare administrative failure.

I am a disaffected, deeply disappointed progressive DEM and I wish DEMS would look at the implications of the overreaching policies of these DEM bills/proposals—– and their potential to hurt so many lower and middle class income segments of America—–instead of just listening to pretty speeches and slogans.

THE PhRMA $150 M support of Obamacare ————

Obama already destroyed a $300 B 10 year drug cost savings for Part D Medicare with his corrupt drug deal with PhRMA.

“In striking the bargain with PhRMA, Obama broke a not-insignificant campaign promise (“Obama will repeal the ban on direct negotiation with drug companies and use the resulting savings … to further invest in improving health care coverage and quality”).

Candidate Obama, citing a paper (//www.globalaging.org/health/us/2007/waste.pdf) by Roger Hickey, Jeff Cruz, and Dean Baker of the Institute for America’s Future, put the savings at $30 billion a year, which over a decade would be roughly twice the $156 billion savings envisioned by the energy and commerce committee. (Hickey, Cruz, and Baker proposed matching not Medicaid drug prices but those negotiated by the more straightforwardly socialist Veterans Administration.)

By this reckoning, Tauzin swindled not $76 billion from President Obama but $220 billion. That’s nearly half what the House health reform bill expects to raise with its proposed surtax on incomes above $350,000!”. Timothy Noah in Slate //www.slate.com/id/2224621/

So we citizens now will get a regressive, pork laden Baucus bill, ——–and the Baucus plan is the Obama plan————–a bill that is predicted to hurt the working poor, middle class, the disabled and single women, a bill that is filled with Obama/Baucus giveaways to special interests like big PhRMA and insurance companies that preempts true cost savings, instead. Obama is using the handy Medicare budget “waste” as a piggy bank for offsets…

And when Obama mentions waste in Medicare it is sometimes not clear if he believes the seniors are the “waste” or its really some Medicare administrative failure.

I am a disaffected, deeply disappointed progressive DEM and I wish DEMS would look at the implications of the overreaching policies of these DEM bills/proposals—– and their potential to hurt so many lower income segments of America—–instead of just listening to pretty speeches and slogans.

E. Nowak—–I have news for you. No politition, Republican or Democrat gives a hoot for anybody but themselves. They are all in to the pockets of Big Pharma, Insurance companies, Big Oil and Wall Street. We the American people are not going to get anything to help us until we have public funded elections.

Putting politics aside…

“the industry agreed to various givebacks and discounts meant to reduce the nation’s pharmaceutical spending by $80 billion over 10 years.”

It brings us lower cost medication, isn’t that bottom line?

To Sally S.

Premiums of Medicare Part D medications are mostly based on drug retail prices which have doubled and tripled since 2006. This Obama drug deal keeps the retail prices high———- and premiums will soon be out of reach for some seniors, since 50% of them have less than $20k per year income.

And these rising premium prices based on drug retail prices will affect non Medicare insurance programs in the future—–

In other words, Obama set PhRMA up to not only gouge seniors, but many non-seniors also.

Good luck to us all with this President, who does back room deals with special interests while he rails against them.

He is worse for America than Bush, because DEMS are STILL assuming that Obama is telling the truth. Very sad.

I am a disaffected, progressive DEM who supported Obama, but now I wish he was not President, I am so deeply disappointed with his policies that only benefit the very rich and special interests.

John Owl,

Sure you are a Dem. And I am from Mars.

If you want to pretend to be a Dem, it would help if you don’t use Repub talking points.

What Republicans want to see Obama to negotiate Part D drug prices to reduce premium costs?

You are in DEM denial, Obama has not followed through with his promises about health care that he made as a candidate.

E.G., take a look at this brochure Obama put together against Hillary where he lambasted her for supporting insurance mandates. //www.politico.com/pdf/PPM44_080130_nd_obama_hrc_healthcare_plan_forces_health_insurance2.pdf

Unfortunately I have information and you seem to just have invective.

I have been a DEM all my life, I am from Minnesota, my parents, along with Hubert Humphrey, were members of Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party,

How can You really belive anything the U.S. Media prints ?

We are grateful to the Washington Post, NY Times, Time Magazine and other great Publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected the promise of discretion for almost 40 years. It would have been impossible to develop our plan for the world if it had been subject to the bright lights of publicity during those years. But the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march toward a world-government. The supernatural sovereignty of the Intellectual Elite and the world bankers is surely National auto-determination practiced in the past centuries. ” David Rockefeller, addressing the Tri-Lateral Commission 1991

Any bill that does not address cost ; and when drug companies and insurance companies control the debate they are not going to be real interested in controlling cost is really just a mandate to require more funds to these groups.

Well, while we are at it, why doesn’t Senator Baucus just go ahead and give Big Pharma a nice, big old blow job? As a Democrat, I am disgusted.

You know it’s real reform when the drug companies, the hospital corporations, the AMA and the insurance companies are all for it. And nothing says “good government” like Billy Tauzin.