The nation's largest pharmaceutical lobbying group is preparing a multimillion-dollar public relations campaign to tout the importance of free-market health care and undercut an expected push by the Obama administration for price controls of prescription drugs.
The effort, which will include a national television commercial scheduled to begin airing next week, is the first salvo in what likely will be a huge battle over health care reform during the Obama presidency.
Other major industries are also gearing up for the fight, including big businesses and insurance companies.
You really didn't think they were going to go away did you? Think of it as good news, in that we'll have an opportunity to continue kicking their ass.
PhRMA says its upcoming advertisement, which will feature TV talk show host and PhRMA spokesman Montel Williams, doesn't criticize the pending Obama administration or any of its health care proposals.
"We're going to do an ad campaign that is designed to make people aware of the importance of preserving your free-market health care system," Mr. Johnson said.
I'm going to pass over the obvious joke that is Montel Williams expecting to be taken seriously about anything. Because there is a far more important point here.
THE IMPORTANCE OF PRESERVING YOUR FREE-MARKET HEALTH CARE SYSTEM? ARE YOU KIDDING ME?
The importance of the United States having fewer doctors, fewer nurses, and fewer hospital beds per capita than the average country in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development?
The importance of a system that results in significantly higher rates of chronic, preventable disease than the epicenter of socialized medicine, The United Kingdom?
The importance of preserving a system that gives us the 45th highest life expectancy in the world?
All while spending more on per capita health care than any country in the world? Is that what's so important? Continuing to spend more and get less? Because that really doesn't seem like that's very important to me.
Giving Medicare the authority to negotiate drug prices - a provision that they currently don't have - would cause the pharmaceutical industry to lose $10 billion to $30 billion in annual revenues, according to a report released last month by the Boston Consulting Group.
"If you start to take a pretty big price decrease out of that large market, it has an enormous impact on drug companies and really their ability to generate their type of shareholder return that they have had in the past," said Peter Lawyer, a senior partner with Boston Consulting.
Oooooooooohhhhh......I see what's so important now. I was working off the assumption that the function of a health care system was to maximize health. Stupid me. How could I have forgotten it is always.....always.....about generating shareholder return.
Remember that if you or someone you love ends up in the ER with a heart attack. It's nothing but an opportunity to generate shareholder return. Why would we want to change that? Because that shareholder return provides money for research and development some of you are saying. Wrong.
A new study by two York University researchers estimates the U.S. pharmaceutical industry spends almost twice as much on promotion as it does on research and development, contrary to the industry’s claim.
Once we know the facts about our current health care system, changing it will be a no brainer. Which is why Big Pharma is about to do everything in their power to keep you from knowing the facts.
Maybe Montel Williams is the only person they could find who'd lower himself enough to take the job.
5 comments:
little naive drug monkey..i figured out a loong time ago that i wasn't beholden to my patient but to the stockholder...our census is low and the administration is breathing down on the docs to find more "customers" (wtf??!!). i am doing my part by not washing my hands and tripping old people in the parking lot.
Can you imagine a world where the patient can't bitch about the co-pay anymore? Or how his neighbor got the fancy new ulcer drug covered on his prescription plan, so why can't he? As much as I know the feds can frak anything up beyond recognition, I've experienced nationalized healthcare in both the UK and Canada, and I say: Bring it!! Well, I suppose they'll still bitch about a co-pay, but at least you can refer them to their Congressperson.
BTW, I've stopped accepting drug company food and flotsam. Just a small gesture, but it feels good to look that rep in the eye and tell him, "Thanks, but no thanks. Spend that money on something other than bribery." Except Chick-fil-a. I'm a sucker for those chicken chunk platters.
We gotta get a pharmacist in the White House like you, Angriest, et al--all I gotta say!
(We have one of the highest premature birth rates in the first-world, too, etc., as well as chronic illnesses that lead to the leading causes of death.)
As y'know darn well, the canards perpetrated by far rightists will neglect facts when they attempt to promote that 'capitalist' agenda because (sometimes it seems like) they tend to be journalism or English majors or people merely interested in making words go in syntactically correct order and not too hung up on the real meaning and implications of what they're attempting to promote, e.g. how the rhetoric flows and making sure there's a few 'infanticides' and 'pro-life' as well as laced with 'damnation' and 'marxism' and 'socialism'. (Well, I've nothing against a good 'read' but it seems that a lot of the arguments I heard before the election were built on synchronizing words lock-stepped to fit in with a frenzied propaganda, and not based on any realistic, or general humanitarian interests).
We already had a pharmacist in the White House. VP Hubert Humphrey, Ph.G. As a senator, he co-wrote the legislation creating the class of prescription-only drugs, back in 1951.
Maybe it's time for another.
"Giving Medicare the authority to negotiate drug prices - a provision that they currently don't have - would cause the pharmaceutical industry to lose $10 billion to $30 billion in annual revenues..."
Oh, poor fucking babies!!! I don't give a fuck what they lose. The taxpayers are losing their shirts because of that stupid medicare drug plan that does not give medicare the authority to negotiate prices. What on earth was congress thinking when they passed that bill? Were most of them being bribed by big pharma? Are those bribes part of the "promotion" that the industry spends so much money on?
Thank you, drugmonkey, for writing this post. I just wish you could drop leaflets from the sky, from coast to coast, to educate the American public on what is happening in the healthcare industry.
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