The White House Deal with Big Pharma
by James Love
Huffington Post: August 6, 2009
The front page of today's New York Times has an article by David
Kirkpatrick, confirming more details of the White House deal with big
pharma. (Be sure to read the original, and support the NYT)
For anyone who didn't notice earlier, this description by PhRMA CEO Billy
Tauzin spells out the dynamics:
Pressed by industry lobbyists, White House officials on Wednesday assured
drug makers that the administration stood by a behind-the-scenes deal to
block any Congressional effort to extract cost savings from them beyond an
agreed-upon $80 billion. . .
"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."
Mr. Tauzin said the administration had approached him to negotiate. "They
wanted a big player to come in and set the bar for everybody else," he said.
He said the White House had directed him to negotiate with Senator Max
Baucus, the business-friendly Montana Democrat who leads the Senate Finance
Committee.
Mr. Tauzin said the White House had tracked the negotiations throughout,
assenting to decisions to move away from ideas like the government
negotiation of prices or the importation of cheaper drugs from Canada. The
$80 billion in savings would be over a 10-year period. "80 billion is the
max, no more or less," he said. "Adding other stuff changes the deal."
Some elements of the deal have been reported earlier in the NY Times and
other newspapers, as well as in this report in the LA Times by Tom
Hamburger, but experts following pharmaceutical issues doubt that the full
extent of the dealings between big pharma, the White House and Senator
Baucus are known.
The crushing defeat of the proposals by Senator Brown and Representative
Waxman to speed entry of generic biologic medicines (known as biosimilars),
was partly due to the hands-off approach taken by the White House, which was
been widely read as a green light for Democrats to side with big pharma on a
hugely important issue that will be extremely difficult to fix later. (More
on this issue here).
The so-called cost savings from big pharma of $8 billion per year for 10
years are a joke for an industry that generates more than $300 billion in US
sales from products that mostly replicate but do not significantly improve
therapeutic benefits over existing medicines. Moreover, the "savings" will
likely take the form of lower consumer co-payments for medicines or small
discounts of reimbursements for expanded government backed insurance
programs. PhRMA and its members are also getting mandatory insurance
coverage, and increased legal obligations to buy their expensive drugs. The
White House has abandoned any real effort to control costs in the pharma
sector.
Unreported by the press are the favors that the White House and Baucus are
doing in the international arena. The White House has slapped and pressured
Thailand for issuing compulsory licenses on medicine patents, killed an
industry-opposed medical R&D treaty at the WHO (here and here), opposed a
PAHO resolution on transparency of pharmaceutical economics, and
collaborated on a disastrous manipulation of a WHO Expert Working Group on
R&D Financing that is embracing industry norms for intellectual property
protection. The Administration has refused to answer questions from the
TransAtlantic Consumer Dialogue (TACD) on intellectual property aspects of
pandemics. The White House won't release the negotiating text of the
so-called "Anti-counterfeiting Trade Agreement," or even the names of the
documents they are withholding, claiming they are state secrets. (More
details here)
Senator Baucus is also working on proposals to mandate high drug prices in
all but the poorest developing countries. Senator Baucus asked that Pfizer
CEO Jeff Kindler (a frequent White House guest these days) work out the
details with the late Professor John Barton, in secret negotiations attended
mostly by pharma industry lobbyists, and Microsoft officials.
Tauzin asks who can trust a White House that does not keep it's promises.
Good question.
***
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/a_coup_for_lobbyists_at_the_white_house/
A Coup for Lobbyists at the White House
By Amy Goodman
Truthdig: August 5, 2009
Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, ousted in the middle of the night just
over a month ago, enjoys global support for his return, with the exception
of the Obama White House. Though Barack Obama first called the Honduran
military's removal of Zelaya a coup, his administration has backpedaled.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Zelaya's attempt to cross the
Nicaraguan border into Honduras "reckless." Could well-placed lobbyists in
Washington be forging U.S. foreign policy?
Lanny Davis was special counsel to President Bill Clinton from 1996 to
1998, functioning as lawyer, crisis manager and spokesman through Clinton's
various scandals. Davis has developed a lucrative specialty as a partner at
Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, offering a "unique 'Legal Crisis
Communications' practice," helping people embroiled in investigations or
scandal. According to recent congressional filings, Davis is lobbying for
the Honduran chapter of the Latin American Business Council. Zelaya had
recently increased the Honduran minimum wage.
Davis testified before Congress on July 10, saying his clients "believe
the best chance for a solution is the dialogue between Mr. Zelaya and
President [Roberto] Micheletti, mediated by President [Oscar] Arias, that is
now ongoing in Costa Rica." That is, until the Arias sessions resulted in a
call for the return of Zelaya. Coup spokesman Cesar Caceres said, "The
mediation has been declared a failure."
Davis continued before Congress, "No one wants bloodshed, and nobody
should be inciting violence." Yet a number of Zelaya supporters have been
killed, and there has been a crackdown on independent media, making
information hard to obtain.
I reached Zelaya by phone in Nicaragua, near the Honduran border, and
asked about Obama's reluctance to use the word coup. He told me, "Everyone
in the world-governments, international organizations, all the lawyers and
judges in the world-have called the fact of capturing a president at 5 a.m.
without trying him, shooting arms, that's a coup d'etat. No one doubts that
that's a coup d'etat."
Bennett Ratcliff, another Clinton White House connection, was a key
adviser to the coup leader, Micheletti, during the Costa Rica negotiations.
According to Ratcliff's firm's bio, he "created TV and radio advertisements
for President Bill Clinton's 1992 and 1996 Presidential campaigns." Firm
partner Melissa Ratcliff "worked as communications strategist for The White
House during the Clinton Administration." Their firm promises "access to key
decision makers and influencers."
With similar anti-Zelaya goals comes lobbyist Roger Noriega, George W.
Bush's assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs and
former staff member of Sen. Jesse Helms. Noriega is lobbying on behalf of
the Honduran Association of Maquiladoras, owners of low-wage factories that
export goods, principally to the U.S.
Both Noriega and Davis represent business interests that benefit from
"free trade" with the U.S. Zelaya, elected originally with the support of
the Honduran business community, has shifted to more populist policies. He
recently joined the emerging Latin American trade bloc ALBA, organized by
countries like Venezuela and Bolivia to counter the economic dominance of
the United States.
During Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, Davis repeated the charge
that Obama would not be capable of handling a crisis "call at 3 a.m."
In his recent visit to Africa, Obama declared the importance of democracy.
Yet here in his own backyard is a genuine coup d'etat that his
administration has done little to reverse. Obama will be in Mexico to meet
President Felipe Calderon and Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada on
Aug. 9. Honduras is expected to be on the agenda. The 3 a.m. call has
come-who will have Obama's ear? Democracy, or the special interests' hired
guns, against whom Obama promised change?
Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.
Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now!," a daily international
TV/radio news hour airing on more than 750 stations in North America. She is
the co-author of "Standing Up to the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in
Extraordinary Times," recently released in paperback.
No comments:
Post a Comment