Landmark in Corporate Welfare

Here is a story about how you and I and everyone else are getting raped in our pocket book and our children's future by paying pharmaceutical companies WHATEVER they want for the drugs that go to Medicare recipients.

In fact, there are lists of prices for these drugs are secret and not shared. In fact, our government signed away its rights to edit the list of drugs they will pay for through this subsidy, pretty much ensuring that no cheaper, but no less effective, drugs will make it onto the list. Nor are they able to buy the drugs from the same companies, but made in another country for a pittance of what they cost to us here.

In the first year of this new program it is reported that pharmaceutical companies increased the prices of these drugs dramatically and that their profits have soared by 45%.

Smile, you've been f*k'd while you were trusting your elected officials to look out for you.

Corporate Welfare should be a Crime.

From the Christian Science Monitor: Linky Bit

CSM

By Mark Lange Wed Jul 18, 4:00 AM ET

San Francisco - Medicare Part D makes it easier for America's elderly to buy prescription drugs. It also gives drug companies a free ride on the backs of the next generation.

Social Security and other entitlements already threaten the nation's fiscal health. So why would Congress make Medicare Part D a landmark in corporate welfare? It may be a financial debacle, but it's a lobbyist's dream. Part D is a multibillion-dollar entitlement for the pharmaceutical industry that taxpayers will be underwriting for the rest of their lives, or until Congress fixes it, whichever comes first.

The White House and Congress claimed the private structure of the program would lead to lower drug prices. In fact, since the program began last year, the opposite has happened, thanks to the lobbying wizards of K Street. A fragmented band of more than 1,400 Part D insurance plans has had little negotiating power with the drug companies. Nor do those plans have much reason to bargain: Part D subsidizes patients on extended and expensive medication regimes at 80 percent.

Most remarkably the bill that Congress pushed through in 2003 didn't let the government negotiate drug prices. Why? Because the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) got no authority to define the "formulary" list of drugs for which Medicare will pay. Absent a credible threat to drop from that list any overpriced drugs that have branded alternatives – which the vast majority has – the government lost its negotiating stick.

Surprise! No price competition. So drug companies were able to raise rates for brand-name medications (that have comparable alternatives, but for which there are no generics) at twice the rate of inflation in the first six months of the program.

...snip...

When the bill was being debated, taxpayers were told the program would cost $400 billion. Today, realistic estimates put the figure at more than $1 trillion. The big drug companies, of course, love this. All those multiyear investments in lobbying have paid off – allowing them to use your tax dollars to boost their earnings.

..snip...

Kind of outrageous, isn't it? but who in congress is buying into this for us? who did we elect that would rather stiff your for the benefit of Corporate Welfare? And what could you do about it today?

Check out the top 20 list of congressional recipients of pharmaceutical lobbying largess in the last election, compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics (www.opensecrets.org). You'll see some familiar names: Sens. Orrin Hatch, Edward Kennedy, Joseph Lieberman, and Hillary Clinton.

During your next lunch break, call their offices. Ask their staffers why a failure to create real price competition in Medicare Part D should cost taxpayers and coddle drug companies. Or ask them how long the program can survive centrally planned profiteering. And you should suggest to them the following reforms:

First, sell medicines used by Medicaid "dual-eligible" patients to Part D plans at the lower Medicaid rates. Second, let congressional watchdogs monitor prices paid by Part D plans versus Medicaid's best prices (today both price lists are confidential). Third, let Medicare leverage global efficiencies by buying FDA-approved drugs made at FDA-inspected facilities overseas (they're the same pills, made by the same companies, at a fraction of the cost). And finally, fund staffing for the Food and Drug Administration to close its record backlog of more than 850 applications for generics, which typically cost 20 to 70 percent less.

..snip...