Obama gives powerful drug lobby a seat at healthcare table

[Captain_Nemo]

The pharmaceutical industry, once condemned by the president as a source of healthcare problems, has become a White House partner.

By Tom Hamburger

August 4, 2009

Reporting from Washington -- As a candidate for president, Barack Obama lambasted drug companies and the influence they wielded in Washington. He even ran a television ad targeting the industry's chief lobbyist, former Louisiana congressman Billy Tauzin, and the role Tauzin played in preventing Medicare from negotiating for lower drug prices.

Since the election, Tauzin has morphed into the president's partner. He has been invited to the White House half a dozen times in recent months. There, he says, he eventually secured an agreement that the administration wouldn't try to overturn the very Medicare drug policy that Obama had criticized on the campaign trail.

http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-na-healthcare-pharma4-2009aug04,0,3660985.story

[DrToast]

1. Hasn't anyone noticed Pharma not trying to block health care reform

I'm okay with Obama striking a deal with this guy. Look how hard it is to reform the insurance industry. Imagine trying to gut the insurance industry and the pharmaceutical industry at the same time.

[SpartanDem]

2. House Compromise Would Let Medicare Negotiate Drug Prices

The government would be authorized to negotiate prices in Medicare’s prescription drug program under an agreement Energy and Commerce Committee Democrats struck Friday on its health overhaul bill.

The panel, rushing to finish its part of the huge bill before leaving later in the day for the August recess, was expected to vote on the drug pricing provision as part of a package of amendments aimed at satisfying the competing demands of liberal and conservative Democrats.

Under the package deal, the committee will vote on three amendments. One, requested by the Blue Dogs, would require a government-run insurance plan created by the bill — the so-called “public option” — to negotiate payments with health providers, instead of setting rates at 5 percent above the Medicare payment level.

Liberals worried that the change would weaken the public plan’s ability to drive cost cuts by private insurers. But Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told lawmakers that wasn’t necessarily true.

The second amendment, according to a summary of the agreement, would make a number of less controversial changes to the bill, including requiring that the public plan use a formulary to control its drug cost.

The third amendment would authorize HHS to negotiate drug prices paid by Medicare — something long fought by the pharmaceutical industry.
http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docID=cqmidday-000003183702

[lamp_shade]

3. Good.

[newfie11]

4. Better to have your enemies up front where you can watch them n/t

[Schulzz]

5. He always said that they would get a seat, too.

We can bring doctors and patients, workers and businesses, Democrats and Republicans together, and we can tell the drug and insurance industry that, while they get a seat at the table, they don't get to buy every chair, not this time, not now.

He started using that line in his "Yes we can!" speech in New Hampshire.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/08/us/politics/08text-obama.html