It's Official - Reconciliation It Is

saintsfan342000 said

Is anyone else the slightest bit concerned that the pharmaceutical industry is spending so much money supporting this bill? People continually denounce the evil insurers and their enormous profits, but not a word on Big Pharm and now here's Big Pharm spending $12 million on advertising to pass this bil. They wouldn't be doing this is they didn't stand to profit huge sums.

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It's because they're the biggest part of health care costs and have long been the favorite son industry of Congress and both parties. Papa Bush was a big stakeholder in Pfizer for years (and may still be). No one wants to cut or remotely limit the industry because the political cash cow is too good to risk damaging, and it's easy to run panic ads that we're cutting valuable research and may never cure anything again. Still, they do things like allow end runs around making generics available (tweaking patents to double their life), do things like ban the $4/inhale albuterol to enforce expensive new HFA's with years until any generic will be legal. Big agriculture is the only industry that's ever remotely been in the ball park with the protected status of the Pharmaceutical industry. They'd funnel money into any plan, and neither party will ever have the nuts to take them on. Every single tort reform/malpractice reform/enforced cost control would be exhausted before you'd even see someone float a bill to remotely suggest touching big Pharm.