Posted on 12/10/2009 8:22:11 PM PST by Gothmog
During the healthcare debate "the Senate found itself tied in knots on Thursday over a bipartisan proposal to allow people to import lower-cost prescription drugs from Canada and certain other countries.
"Democratic leaders delayed a vote, in part, because they feared that the proposal would be approved, potentially blowing apart a deal negotiated by the White House and the pharmaceutical industry."
[excerpted text]
Sen. John McLame said: "'If it passes, as it should, it breaks the agreement that the White House made with PhRMA....the White House, as well as PhRMA, has been over here lobbying furiously.'"
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
It's also evidence that GOP Senators actually have some backbone and are forcing the dems into a very, very uncomfortable position.
The article notes: When they were lawmakers both Obama and Rahm Emanuel suppported drug re-importation but now have changed their tune, echoing the Bush Administration's concerns over drug safety.
But in addition, what is being missed/ignored/hidden by the media is that dems have fought for drug re-importation for years (busses to Canada anyone? Wonder what happened to those?) Now w/ the Dorgan amendment they could solve that problem.
But the dems can't because Obama and Reid have held secret talks with all the big "special interest groups" (most transparent admin ever! Really!!) to get them to shut up and not oppose healthcare reform.
Now a key healthcare 'reform' proposal championed by dems for years is being stymied by 1) a dem president Obama opposed to reimportation because of his secret deals with special interest groups and 2) GOP senators, who -- not mentioned in this story are historically opposed to drug re-importation -- seem prepared to vote "FOR" it in order to break Obama's 'secret' healthcare coalition.
Why should we continue to subsidize R&D and production for cheap drugs to support socialized medicine in Canada and other countries when the Dear Leader intends to impose a similar system on us?
i am notsure what deal bambi made, but it is certainly not binding.
McCain is an idiot but the Repubs need to fight like crazed badgers against these socialists.
I do not think Liberman, Collins or Snowe will cave because Aetna in CT and UNUM in ME.
The good news too is the healthcare groups (docs, hospitals, hmo’s and health insurers) see the Dems and Obama are losing and losing power. I think they feared Obama a few months ago but not anymore.
Keep calling and faxing.
If there is re-importation, prices in Canada and other countries will go up about 50% of the difference between US prices and their current prices, to keep total profits where they are.
I could be wrong, but I don't believe you're supposed to interject your personal opinions in the original copy - but save it for your own remarks post?
I know, as a writer/editor myself, I would take great umbrage at such liberties, especially as you are posting on the WWW, where it will float forever.
Yes. Exactly.
The U.S. drug companies spend big bucks developing new drugs, testing them, and jumping through all the regulatory hoops. Then when they have been approved, the Canadians and others who contributed nothing take the drugs and sell them at a discount.
If Americans then buy the drugs in Canada, they are basically going to destroy the innovations of the American drug companies.
By no means are those companies perfect. But there isn’t a whole lot of innovative work done or discoveries being made in countries where there is socialist health care. They are basically leaching off of us.
All Republicans can do is try to create chaos and delay Obamacare. We can win the battle and lose the war. For example, if Nelson's "no abortion funding" amendment fails, Nelson might keep his word and stop Obamacare cold. If it passed, that might give Nelson an excuse not to filibuster, and then, with 60 votes, it goes to Pelosi's conference where the abortion restriction language would likely be stripped out, but the bill itself would have taken a giant step forward.
I agree w/ you in part, but IMHO as consumers we should ‘subsidize’ advances in medicine because in the end it will benefit the ‘subsidizers’ and all of us through the free market system.
In contrast, Obama and dems only want advanced drugs/med procedures for themselves. They do not care about the intellectual time and effort it takes to achieve those results, and want the rest of society to be deprived of those benefits in order to help start a communist revolution — with themselves as the prime beneficiary.
Neither 1)the dems long-term goal of promoting drug re-importation nor 2) Obama’s government healthcare monstrosity help any of us, so it’s nice to see both evil efforts stymied by their own (pick one or all): hypocrisy, double dealing, faithlessness, greed, just plain idiocy; etc.
The net result of importation will be less money for R&D.
that’s what happens when you deal with politicians, dems, socialists, communists and all the other thugocrats.
If you let imports in from overseas the incentive for making new drugs evaporates. The people who will die remain unseen because who can say what new drug would have saved them?
The solution is simple. No FDA Approval needed to sell drugs. The only requirement should be honest advertising about what is sold and even that does not need much government involvement because a good reputation is very valuable asset to throw away.
Are there really any American pharmaceutical companies?
You know, initially I saw reports of people like Snowe and so forth negotiating with the Dems on this bill, and I was wondering what in the world was going on.
Thinking about it some more, when those reports originally came out, support for this bill was MUCH higher, largely because nobody had any idea what was really in it. They didn’t see the ugly truth.
Were the negotiations just a stalling tactic? If so, they definitely seemed to have worked. I was worried that the first time that we’d hear about what was in the bill was after it was signed into law.
Keep up the Tea Parties, gentlemen.
“All Republicans can do is try to create chaos and delay Obamacare.”
AND come up with an alternate package that we can present to the American people. We have an election in 2010, and we always have the court of public opinion. My plan:
-Allow for drug re-importation. If other countries want to fleece our R&D, we can play this game too and fleece their socialist system.
-Allow for insurance competition across state lines. Put to rest the argument that “the market hasn’t worked for health care”, since the market hasn’t even had a chance to work.
-Crack down on frivolous lawsuits
There you go. I just wrote a health care plan on about 1/4 of a page. Put that against the 2000+ page bill or whatever the page count is at now.
I am so sorry about your great umbrage and really fear for my rep on the www o great sage of ‘gramer’, but I think that as an editor if you check using the AP style rules, FR rules, Strunk & White’s “Elements of Style” and Arthur Plotnik’s “The Elements of Editing” I used correct style.
A lesson for you on use of quotations (double and single), ellipses and overall editing/communication.
This is an excerpted article. IOW, I have to cut down articles to 100 words according to FR rules. So, when the article identifies McLame as:
“Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona,...”
In order to include more important information, yet clearly identify the source, it is perfectly fine to identify him as McLame. For example:
Sen. McLame said: “’maine-iac7 is much too worried about things maine-iac7 doesn’t know about.’ Asked later whether he was serious, McLame asserted, ‘You betcha.’” [Edit note, the use of both double and single quote marks to clearly delineate material]
Naturally we should follow established practices important for effective and accurate communication. I did. And if your problem is that I described McCain as McLame, well that’s his problem, he is lame.
That was funny. I give you credit for it. Don’t agree with everything but a wry wit goes a long way ;-]
Yep, there’s a lot (a heck of a lot) not to like in this bill, so I agree, whatever means necessary to stop it, I’m just glad republicans are finding ways to stick it to dems, see my post #9.
I doubt that's what would happen. Canada and other nations with socialized systems more or less set the prices they will pay for drugs. US drug companies go along because they make healthy profits and recover their fixed costs in the US, so they still make money selling for significantly less in Canada and other nations.
I'd bet they'd just raise prices on some drugs in the US to make up for any losses from increased re-importation.
I can’t speak for all of that, but so far as Snowe I think she’s up for re-election in 2012, not 2010, but was probably hedging her bets.
By agreeeing to the first hurdle of healthcare reform, she could always say she ‘supported’ it, but that then later they changed it and so she had to vote against it. A shrewd move for a ‘politician’ (certainly not a leader). She was just covering her butt and hopefully she’s smart enough to vote against whatever monstrosity they come up with.
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