Big Pharma Teams with President Obama

Big Pharma has struck a deal with the White House¹ – now Americans should really be concerned. Big Pharma will spend 150 million to 200 million during the August recess to run ads on TV to support the president’s struggling health care plan. That is chump change compared to the extra hundreds of billions Big Pharma plans to rake in over the next decade, but it will certainly impact public opinion. The relationship raises numerous ethics questions.

This is simply the next step in what I reported on last month in my article, Big Pharma & Friends Poised for Massive Profits from Health Care Reform.

Remember, this is the same Big Pharma that during the Bush administration bought every Republican vote so as to block drug re-importation at lower prices for America.

If President Obama wanted to reduce the cost of health care one major area for improvement would be lowering the ridiculous cost of drugs, which are sold to Americans at a mark up of one hundred times the cost of production (and in some cases far more).

This could be accomplished by ensuring the government can negotiate drug prices (which it currently can’t) and allowing re-importation for real price competition – and both of these ideas are traditional Democrat ideas. The reason they aren’t traditional Republican ideas is because Big Pharma owns Republicans. Now it appears that Big Pharma will own the White House, which has the net effect of owning the Democrat majority (something they have worked at but struggled to fully accomplish).

Of course, stamping out rampant Big Pharma fraud would save even more money.

Big Pharma is buying protection as it always does. It is politics as usual. Americans suffer, regardless of party affiliation.