The big pharmaceutical companies thought they had bought some form of peace with a “secret” White House deal that limited their exposure to the new health care “reform” by paying off the Obama administration (and that is exactly what it is, a payoff). Lo and behold, the White House is reneging on the deal – leaving the big drug companies twisting in the wind.
U.S. drugmakers may have trouble enforcing a bargain the industry struck with President Barack Obama to absorb no more than $80 billion in cost cuts as part of a health-care overhaul, congressional Democrats said.
Lawmakers, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, have said Congress isn’t bound by agreements the Obama administration negotiated with six groups that pledged to help cut $2 trillion from medical spending over 10 years.
“Their agreements don’t bind me whatsoever,” Democratic Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa said yesterday, just hours after Senate Democrats questioned top White House aides about the agreement with Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the Washington-based industry trade group known as PhRMA. “We can do what we want.”
Yesterday, it was congressional Democrats feeling screwed. Today it is the Pharma lobbyists who thought they had a deal.
You will need a scorecard to figure out who is currently being screwed by the administration. Or you can use the short form and figure out that it will be everyone that gets it from the bunch in the White House.
That’s easier and easier to see.
I wonder from where they thought the “cost cuts” were to come? I guess they figured that this quarter’s numbers would be improved by the profits from the amount of rope they sold to the commies.
PhRMA has always opposed Congressional attempts to ‘negotiate’ drug prices under Medicare knowing full well that private entities cannot honestly negotiate with governmental authority.
Whatever made them think that dealing with the White House would be any different escapes me.