Insurgents Create Havoc on All Fronts:
While insurgets in Iraq killed 144 yesterday in the deadliest sectarian attack since the American-led invasion, another kind of insurgency is taking place in the U.S. Representatives of two dozen drug companies met recently in Washington, D.C. to determine how best to combat the new Democratic Congress.
The drug companies are concerned—is that too soft a word?—that the new congress will begin to combat the run away medical care costs by allowing the government to begin negotiating prices for Medicare drug patients. For more than a decade the Republicans have been telling us that the Medicare program had to be fixed, that the treasury would be bankrupt in the near future if something wasn't done, but now that Democrats are in control of Congress, there actually seems a chance that something might actually be done. The strongest indication, of course, is the conspiratorial meetings between top officials of the drug companies and their attempts to hire top assistants to Democratic leaders as lobbyest.
While insurgets in Iraq killed 144 yesterday in the deadliest sectarian attack since the American-led invasion, another kind of insurgency is taking place in the U.S. Representatives of two dozen drug companies met recently in Washington, D.C. to determine how best to combat the new Democratic Congress.
The drug companies are concerned—is that too soft a word?—that the new congress will begin to combat the run away medical care costs by allowing the government to begin negotiating prices for Medicare drug patients. For more than a decade the Republicans have been telling us that the Medicare program had to be fixed, that the treasury would be bankrupt in the near future if something wasn't done, but now that Democrats are in control of Congress, there actually seems a chance that something might actually be done. The strongest indication, of course, is the conspiratorial meetings between top officials of the drug companies and their attempts to hire top assistants to Democratic leaders as lobbyest.
posted by Jim | 10:03 AM
1 Comments:
I'll tell what has really bugged me for a long time now. These huge, out-of-control drug manufacturers throw away -- no, kiss away -- gazillions of dollars pimping their damn pills on tee vee. Then they turn around and cry poverty whenever someone has the guts to suggest that maybe, just maybe, the government (Medicare) could perhaps maybe could be negotiate lower drug prices for Americans enrolled in the program. "We have to charge what we charge because if we didn't we wouldn't have any money for R&D." The CEO of GlaxoSmithKline was a talkfest with Ted Koppel (now of Discovery) on CSPAN last night. That wasn't an LLBean cotton no-iron business shirt he was wearing.
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