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Impeach George Bush
Congress and Administration Use Our Health to Rob Our Pockets
Until we address the BIG MONEY flowing in and out of our Federal Government, American Citizens will continue to be Slaves - working to enhance the purses of someone else. In this case, its the Health Care Industry.
Source: The Progress Report, 2004-06-23
Candidate: Big Government
There is no doubt but that we all have to vote for John Kerry for President. But, Please seriously consider voting Libertarian for our Congress people and Senators.
HEALTH CARE
The Price of Influence
Public Citizen (http://www.citizen.org/) today at noon will release a new study on how lobbying and campaign contributions by the health care and pharmaceutical industries produced a Medicare bill that showers those industries with taxpayer largesse, while leaving millions of seniors without comprehensive coverage.
In all, the industries spent $140 million to hire more than 900 lobbyists in 2003 – an all-time high for those industries.
The Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), which inserted provisions into the bill prohibiting the government from negotiating lower drug prices, shelled out more than $16 million alone – a major increase from just the year before.
Similarly, HMOs spent more than $32 million, and in return received a Medicare bill that encourages privatization, and sends an extra $46 billion to HMOs for prescription drug coverage "even though the government could do it more efficiently and cheaply."
In all, more than 20 executives and lobbyists from these industries achieved "Ranger" or "Pioneer" status by raising at least $200,000 or $100,000, respectively, for President Bush in the 2000 or 2004 campaigns. The study will be available on Public Citizen's web site, www.citizen.org
THE REVOLVING DOOR: The report finds almost half of all lobbyists for the health care and pharmaceutical industries have gone through the "revolving door" between K Street and the federal government.
Even before President Bush completed his term, "top staffers left his administration and then lobbied for the drug and HMO industries." And the exodus has increased since the passage of the Medicare bill. At least four key officials who helped write the Medicare bill have left the administration to help health industry clients benefit from the new law.
Similarly, in Congress, six top staffers at the center of negotiations over the Medicare bill have recently left public service to lobby for the industry.
BACK ON THE INSIDE: The HMO and drug industries have also started to infiltrate the Bush administration as it oversees the implementation of the new Medicare law.
Three prominent drug industry and HMO lobbyists have recently moved into senior health policy positions at the Department of Health and Human Services; another has become a spokesman for the Bush re-election campaign.
And the lead White House negotiator on the Medicare bill – presidential adviser Doug Badger – previously represented half a dozen drug companies as a lobbyist for Washington Council Ernst & Young.
American Progress (http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=14528) examines the relationship between President Bush and the owner of one of the largest pharmacy benefits management companies in America.
INDUSTRY SLATES GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATES: With Republican and Democratic governors across the country pressing the White House to stop preventing their states from purchasing lower priced drugs from Canada, the pharmaceutical industry has tried to quell opposition by working to elect its very own executives and lobbyists as governors.
Last year, the industry succeeded in electing lobbyist and former RNC Chairman Haley Barbour (R) governor of Mississippi. This year, the industry is running former Eli Lilly executive Mitch Daniels for governor in Indiana.
Drugmakers had previously succeeded in getting him appointed White House budget director from 2001-2003, "even though Daniels had no full-time job experience related to the federal budget." During Daniel's tenure, the White House took the extraordinary step of attaching provisions protecting Eli Lilly from lawsuits to the bill creating the Department of Homeland Security.
INDUSTRY SLATES SENATE CANDIDATE: While Public Citizen reports that 30 former U.S. senators and representatives lobbied for drugmakers and HMOs, the industry is also slating one of its lobbyists as a candidate for federal office: Bill McCollum (R) is a top Senate candidate in Florida, and last year lobbied for drugmaker AstraZeneca – a company that "government lawyers have accused of colluding with generic companies by paying them not to sell low-cost versions of a drug when its patent expires."
AstraZeneca currently controls the patent for Tamoxifen (a key breast cancer drug) and charges Americans the highest prices in the world for the drug, even though it was originally developed with American taxpayer dollars. The company has opposed bipartisan congressional efforts to allow Americans to buy Tamoxifen at lower prices in Canada, and bills to force drugmakers to charge lower prices for government-subsidized drugs.
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