Obama Reverses Stand on Drug Industry Deal

[babsbunny]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/08/us/08lobby.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
Published: August 7, 2009

WASHINGTON — Caught between a pivotal industry ally and the protests of Congressional Democrats, the Obama administration on Friday backed away from what drug industry lobbyists had said this week was a firm White House promise to exclude from a proposed health care overhaul the possibility of allowing the government to negotiate lower drug prices under Medicare.
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David Axelrod, left, senior adviser to President Obama, and Jim Messina, the White House deputy chief of staff, on Feb. 10.
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The reversal underscored the delicate balancing act the White House has pursued in its strategy of negotiating behind-the-scenes deals to win industry support without alienating liberal supporters on Capitol Hill.

[Ken Burch]

1. Jimmy Messina is the White House deputy chief of staff?

That's a better gig than Kenny Loggins has these days.

(sorry...SOMEBODY had to say it...)

[Blue_In_AK]

12. Good one...

:rofl:

[still_one]

2. Did he reverse himself, or did the media misrepresent the story in the first place?

Unless I hear the person say it directly, I view anything the media says as suspect

This is the media saying these are just regular citizens at the townhalls. Bullshit

[SeattleGirl]

4. I was wondering the same thing.

Media seems awfully quick to report on questionable things, but very slow to report what may be the actual truth of a matter.

[sandnsea]

5. None of the media is accurate - NONE of it

Not Rachel or Keith or the NY Times or Charlie Gibson or Charlie Rose or Raw Story or Will Pitt - none of it. Everybody has an angle and they all have to pay the bills. If you read all of it, including original source documents, you might get 90% of the truth. It's tough to do that though.

[Gabi Hayes]

6. I hope he reversed himself, cause that shows he's starting to see, and respond to,

the pressure of the will of the people

how dare he go against the will of the corporate sponsors, though?

[still_one]

7. True, but it would be far better if he had enough common sense to know it already /nt

[regnaD kciN]

11. When the Corporate Media screws up a story...

...rather than admit their own mistake, they just claim the subject "flip-flopped" -- that way, they can do more stories about the subject's "problem" instead of their own.

:eyes:

[fasttense]

3. Great news. A giveaway to monopolies is not the way America was built.n/t

[BlancheSplanchnik]

8. Great news

seems rec worthy to me...

maybe cleaning up the post would help? It's a little distracting with all the command indices included.

[lib_wit_it]

9. If Obama were to have made such a deal, it would be another example of him perpetuating a policy

that screws the rest of us in favor of filthy rich corporations becoming increasingly filthy. We need Obama to reverse the damage, not exacerbate it.

Whatever deals he has made or unmade, he has boggled this whole health care issue, starting well before he guaranteed that the story of his health "insurance" reform press conference would be about his calling the cops stupid and not about anything to do with healthcare. I'm disappointed by his lack of discipline, discipline and staying on message having been one of his strengths.

[rocktivity]

10. Sniff, sniff--I small a retraction

From the original Times story (8/5):

...the industry successfully demanded that the White House explicitly acknowledge for the first time that it had committed to protect drug makers from bearing further costs in the overhaul. The Obama administration had never spelled out the details of the agreement.

“We were assured: ‘We need somebody to come in first. If you come in first, you will have a rock-solid deal,’ ” Billy Tauzin, the former Republican House member from Louisiana who now leads the pharmaceutical trade group, said Wednesday. “Who is ever going to go into a deal with the White House again if they don’t keep their word? You are just going to duke it out instead.”

A deputy White House chief of staff, Jim Messina, confirmed Mr. Tauzin’s account of the deal in an e-mail message on Wednesday night. “The president encouraged this approach,” Mr. Messina wrote. “He wanted to bring all the parties to the table to discuss health insurance reform.”

Two lines out of an e-mail (from Messina to whom?) is an affirmation? And of what, exactly? The president encouraged all parties being at the table--well, duh. How does that translate into ANY kind of a "deal?" Well, now we have our answer:

...after contending for two days that the Senate Democrats had misunderstood the White House aide’s comments, the White House appeared Friday night to back away...Linda Douglass, a White House spokeswoman on health matters, said the question of government drug-price bargaining “was not discussed during the negotiations.” Asked if that meant such a provision was excluded, as the top drug lobbyists had previously said, Ms. Douglass declined to comment, repeating, “It was not discussed.”

White House officials said Friday that Mr. Messina, the deputy chief of staff who sent the e-mail message, had not intended to confirm that the deal ruled out price negotiations.

You may not like, believe or agree with Douglass' contention that a deal was not discussed. But for the Times to dismiss it as "no comment" suggests that THEY'RE the ones who are "backing away from" and "reversing their stand on" this story!

:headbang:
rocktivity