Jim Drinkard of USA Today writes:
An emerging prescription drug benefit for retirees represents a victory for drug companies and their lobbyists, who have spent heavily to keep Republicans in control of Congress.
pharmaceutical-makers already have averted what they feared most: a single new bloc of 40 million consumers with the market power to dramatically drive down prescription prices — and industry profits. Both the House and Senate versions of the bill bar the government from getting involved in price negotiations.
Instead, both bills break the nation into 10 or more regions where private insurance companies would offer coverage for prescriptions. Rather than negotiating with the government, the pharmaceutical industry would deal with an array of insurers, each with thousands of clients, rather than millions. The extra costs would be paid by taxpayers and consumers.
Think of the "extra costs" this way. Every time your grandmother goes to the pharmacy for her prescription, the Republicans are reaching into her purse, taking out, say, a twenty, and handing it to big pharma. Sure, it's "only" twenty bucks, but it sure adds up fast, doesn't it?
So how did this happen? Loot, repeat.
In 2002, drugmakers spent $20 million on congressional races, four-fifths of it to help Republicans. That doesn't count a $17 million television ad campaign that the industry funded to boost Republican members of Congress in close races.
A new drug benefit would pump about $400 billion in tax dollars into the health care system over 10 years.
The loot: $37 million to skim $400 billion. Not a bad deal! (Say, how is HealthSouth doing these days, "Dr. Kitty" Frist?)
The repeat: When the $400 billion is directed to wired, Republican firms, they can fund the lobbying and the campaign contributions and the think tanks and the MWs to privatize Medicare entirely. Then they can take hundreds of bucks off your grandmother instead of just twenty!
Loot, repeat. It's the Republican way!
NOTE: I wrote the other day that Republicans weren't taking this legislation seriously (heck, we don't know how to pay for it after the tax cuts for the rich, and it only kicks in after the election, in 2006), since they hadn't lined up any companies to be players in the regions. But I guess the government largesse is so lavish that the companies are, well, shy about stepping forward to take advantage of it. Either that or typical sloppiness by the malAdministration.