The sorry truth is that Obama's opposition to re-importation of pharmaceuticals simply STINKS.

[Faryn Balyncd]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7204695


How much of this corporatist shit will we swallow?

[Faryn Balyncd]

1. I guess our silent "Un-recker" thinks we are disloyal if we won't salute Obama's deal with Big Pharm

[SidDithers]

34. I find it hilarious that in a post with a +36 rec count...

the first reply was a whine from the OP about it being unrec'd.

:rofl:

Sid

[Telly Savalas]

50. Considering the article's assertion about Obama was made up out of thin air

it's all he's got.

[dotymed]

61. Maybe I am misunderstanding your comment.

President Obama is against (re)importing drugs from our neighbors. The same drugs that are made here(usually) and exported at MUCH lower prices to non Americans. Now its the rethugs who are for importing medicine at much lower prices. It used to be just the opposite. Obama made deals with big pharma, allowing them to keep raping(and killing) Americans, so they would not fight our GREAT HC reform(bailouts to insurance companies) at the expense of the people who can least afford it. The HC "reform" is not in our best interest. The insurance companies won, and bragged about it. Now, our once great party, is trying to pass shit legislation, call it reform, so they can have a chance at re-election. All the while the rich get richer and poor multiply exponentially. The Democrats do not want real HC reform (a couple of them do) because they don't want to piss off their meal tickets. Unless they are really going to give us meaningful reform, like HR676, they can stick this shit legislation because it stinks. And Obama continues to sell us out. He became a rethug real fast. Hell, we will never have publicly financed elections to take the corporations out of politics, our only resort is revolution.

[HuckleB]

62. Obama is a "rethug?"

Oh brother.

:eyes:

Oh and the assertion about Obama being "against" reimportation is something out of thin air.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-tc-nw-health-senate-1210-121dec11,0,7618281.story

[dotymed]

74. I am not a neo-con

Just because I voted for and supported Obama, doesn't mean that I support whatever he does. To me it is country before party. Your "thin air" mantra is absurd. Obama is against anything that will cut into pharma's profits. He made a "deal" with them so they would not oppose this "great" (sarcasm) HC reform that will only enrich the insurance and pharmaceutical industries even more at the expense of everyone except the wealthy. rah rah

[HuckleB]

75. That doesn't make Obama a "rethug."

If you expect to support everything any politician does, you were living in a fantasy world.

[TexasObserver]

60. Agreed. One might think they're doing it as part of a scheme to ...

... never stop talking about Unrecomend Club.

The first rule of Unrecommend Club is ... never stop talking about Unrecommend Club.

[Thrill]

2. Its tough. I didn't expect this from him.

Its disappointing.

[historian]

65. otrher things are disappointing also

escalating the war in Afghanistan (which no one can ever win as proven by history), bush first vetoed importing drugs from canada and against medicare being able to bargain with the drug companies for the best price (as they do in the rest of the world) and bush also implemented the idea of throwing trillions of dollars at the bankers and wall street scum bags. We are now having a replay of bush and dont believe otherwise. The only difference is that this one can complete a sentence!

[shadowknows69]

3. If I couldn't get some free samples from my Doctor of my meds I'd be dead

And they're running out and we have no way of affording them. If/when I have to pay for them all my meds cost over $500 a month. My wife takes home maybe 1200 a month. 700-800 in rent/utilities/phone and, well, do the math.

[LakeSamish706]

4. I would say that we have been scammed (and I think that we have) but,

of the three to choose from at the end of the line, I still believe that Obama was the best... ugh how that pains me at this point to say so. If America can't do better than this, we are doomed! We get over 8 F***ing years of Bush/Cheney to have to fall on this sword.... I really thought that Obama was going to be the black night in shinning armor. Very disappointed to say the least.

[ThomCat]

14. He may have been the least of the 3 evils,

but just once it would be nice to have a president who isn't evil. :(

[LakeSamish706]

18. Agreed, but I will be damned if I know how to get one elected... There are a few

good people out there that would look out for us, but getting them to the top of the pile is beyond me.

[Goldstein1984]

5. I'm lucky

I have good insurance.

But I still hate the corporate shit. I reduced my medication requirements with some lifestyle changes and substitution of over the counter alternatives. My doctor gave me a ration of shit over it, but I stuck with it. I'm doing fine, and Big Pharma is denied about $600 a month in revenue.

Somebody on another post said it earlier and said it well. All you can do is refuse to participate in the system with every means at your disposal. Stop spending money and being a good little corporate consumer citizen in every way you can.

But if you need medications, then the continuation of the non-importation policy based on bogus safety concerns is a slap in the face.

What can we do but get loud and get heard.

But we're going to have to get loud quietly so we don't upset the Obama Loyalists.

[Elwood P Dowd]

6. I have given up on Obama.

We were bamboozled, and now we have to live with it for three more years. The Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush II shit keeps on keeping on.

[Raine]

45. Sadly so have I

anymore I have given up on looking to him to solve anything that's of concern to me, just as I had to for the last 8 years. :-(

[lovuian]

54. me too But he doesn't surprise me

I knew he would be their corporate man

[seeinfweggos]

7. of course it sucks - it's obama, right?

and god knows we must shit on the head of our party.

[ThomCat]

15. If the head of our party does something shitty he should not be

immune to criticism. Otherwise we become republicans.

[Faryn Balyncd]

16. Glenn Greenwald: "A Major Difference between Progressives & Conservatives"

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/03/24/criticism/index.html


(I think you nailed it, ThomCat.)

[rudy23]

25. I love when people pretend that there's a disconnect between action and consequence.

Obama does something shitty, and there are consequences.

[bvar22]

37. shit on the head of our party ?

Just returning the favor.


The DLC New Team
Republican Lite ONLY!
Working Class Democrats Need NOT Apply

(Screen Capped from the DLC Website)

[Lorien]

38. Yeah, it's all about Obama. Who cares if people can afford to stay alive

right? :eyes:

[freddie mertz]

41. "Health care is not a pony." That says it all.

[nashville_brook]

44. way to miss the point.

[Raine]

47. No it's the opposite

our party and the head of it has shit on us. :-(

[Ken Burch]

59. Nobody's opposed to this just because Obama supports it.

Get over yourself.

[ima_sinnic]

73. "our" party?

somehow I feel like an outsider because I don't have millions to throw at politicians so they will pass legislation benefiting me. If you feel part of that club, more power to you (literally as well as figuratively).

[ncteechur]

8. Has the WH given an explanation for their opposition?

before I rake him over the coals, I want to know why he doesn't want this to happen. I believe that if he publicly comes out in favor, he is going back on the deal he made with pHarma to get their support for health care reform. he may be working behind the scenes to make this deal happen. the bill will pass but not until next year after the health care bill passes. we will see if he signs or vetoes the bill--then you will know his real feelings.

[Faryn Balyncd]

9. (Perhaps its not his "real feelings", but his actions, that matter.)

[paulsby]

12. the claim will be "it's for our protection"

that;'s the line the statists use every time they want to diminish your choice and freedoms, whether it's smoking bans in all private businesses in seattle, trans fat bans in NYC, (attempted) ephedrine bans by congress, or this crappy legislation

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

13. It was an attempt to derail any reform.

With the amendment in the bill, it had very little hope of getting 60 votes. That's why there were a number of Republicans who were supporting the amendment. John McCain, for example

[budkin]

21. Liberals need to stop complaning - Rahm

[paulsby]

10. this is one issue where i can agree with the "anti-corporatists"

it's a ridiculous position. i'm all about consumer choice.

if i can buy drugs IN mexico and canada (and I can), why can't i have them shipped to me, assuming i have a script (and they require same)?

answer: because pharma companies don't want me to

[HuckleB]

11. That's not really what stinks.

If he's in opposition to our government negotiating for better prices, then that stinks. Re-importation shouldn't be necessary.

[ThomCat]

17. For people who aren't in a plan that negotiates lower prices

or for people without insurance, importing meds was the last way to get meds cheaply.

It really sucks steaming piles of bullshit that our own party, and a Democratic President, are coming out against importing safe meds just because their corporate masters say so.

:grr:

They should be doing what voters want, not what corporate executives want. Damn it! :nuke:

[HuckleB]

46. If you're not in any plan, how is re-importation going to help?

[SharonAnn]

49. Because then you can get our drugs cheaper at the pharmacy.

[HuckleB]

55. At what pharmacy?

On edit: This is an interesting piece on the issue...

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1936287/

[ThomCat]

70. If you aren't in a plan you can still have a pharmacy

charge your credit card and ship meds to you. Lots of elderly people were doing exactly that in Canada before it became illegal.

[HuckleB]

72. Exactly when was it made illegal?

Clarity helps to get the core of the problem.

[sandnsea]

19. Except Obama and the FDA don't oppose it

"A White House official said the Obama administration was not fighting the drug importation proposal offered by Democratic Senator Byron Dorgan along with a number of Republicans, including Senator John McCain, who lost to Obama in last year's presidential election.

"That's just not true," said the official who asked not to be identified.

But suggesting the administration was less than enthusiastic about it, FDA Commissioner Dr. Margaret Hamburg sent a letter this week saying the agency supported drug importation but had safety concerns about Dorgan's plan."

They have concerns they're working out. Too bad there's nobody advocating for the people in that process.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE5BB07L20091212?type=politicsNews

[tblue]

24. So where are all the dead Canadians?

The 'safety concerns' are nothing but a smoke screen. I ordered one drug from a Canadian pharmacy because they charged me only $120 instead of the $180 I'd pay here at Walmart or Costco (I shopped around a lot!). Know where the Canadian pharmacy shipped my prescription from? MISSISSIPPI!!! It's the same damned drug!

[burning rain]

58. It's striking how the usual logic of "free trade" doesn't extend to pharmaceuticals.

Food from Canada or where-have-you: fine with modest inspections, medicines... zOMG! KEEP THAT FURRN NASTINESS OUT!

[Selatius]

27. Safety concerns are overblown and totally unwarranted. Canada isn't a third world cesspool.

You're more likely to be killed by drywall imported from China because of noxious chemicals in it than by pharmaceutical drugs brought in from Canada.

[sandnsea]

31. "as currently written"

Which means there are changes that can be made to address concerns that criminals would set up a Canadian front and then send people phony meds, like that pharmacist in Kansas did. I have no problem with Canadian, or even Mexican, medication. My parents brought back meds from Mexico for years. But the FDA is right to make sure the medication is safe, just like we expect drywall and children's toys to be safe. Everybody wants their freedom to do whatever they want to do - until somebody dies and then all hell breaks loose and people start demanding to know why the government didn't prevent this tragedy.

And really, the problem is that every other country either negotiates or regulates drug prices. We don't. If these people really cared about drug prices, they'd address the root of the problem.

[HuckleB]

56. Yes, but Canada isn't so hot on the idea itself.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1936287/

Are we being good neighbors by taking advantage of their good government?

[HuckleB]

57. Self Delete/Repeat Post.

[katandmoon]

64. So, you'll take the words of an anonymous WH official?

[budkin]

20. There is no other way to slice it... a total giveaway to the drug makers

[TheWebHead]

22. re-importation is a ridiculous concept

the idea that primarily american pharma co's would sell drugs to canada at a discount only to have america leech off that discount which would prompt the american pharmas to ration drugs and the canadians to subsequently ban the export is crazy.

something largely lost on people is that americans are subsidizing the rest of the developed world and their universal healthcare systems on the pharma and med equipment side (ditto w/ defense spending but that's another topic). There is new drug/device innovation almost solely due to the ability to make money in America while making nearly nothing anywhere else. Equity and innovation would dry up and many people would lose jobs in those industries if we simply copied the rest of the world or tried to import those items we're subsidizing in other countries.

[midnight armadillo]

28. pfffft

The pharma industry could easily afford to sell their drugs for less and still make a handsome profit in the US. How? By cutting their massive direct-to-consumer ad budgets, which are larger than their R&D budgets. Many of their huge profit-making drugs are for conditions that they have invented and marketed. Pharma co's also make a mint via exploitation of the US patent system.

Or how about a company like Genzyme, which sells their drug Cerazyme for $200,000 per year (research for this and its large-scale production was funded by the US government, incidentally). That's $200k/year for life...and since the drug is 1/3 of Genzyme's revenue and the patients have no alternative they have no incentive to ever, ever lower the price.

Over the past several years there have been many news reports about investigations into particular government drugs which are excessively priced. One of the most interesting cases concerns the drug Ceredase, which is used to treat Gaucher's disease, a rare affliction which affects only a few thousand persons in the United States. The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) spent several million dollars to develop Ceredase. The original research was funded at Tufts University. The scientists at Tufts University closed down the program at the University and created a new start-up company, named the Genzyme corporation, which became the marketing company for Ceredase. The "roll-out"price for the drug was extremely high -- some patients were required to pay as much as $550 thousand for a single year of treatment. The company was able to generate more than $100 million in revenue for one year from about 300 patients. Because the U.S. has no program for controlling drug prices, nothing could be done about the enormous burden this high price placed on the patients who received the drug. Many of the stories from patients who suffer from Gaucher's disease were heart breaking. Genzyme employees a number of "reimbursement specialists," who met with individual patients to help them find ways to pay for the drug. One women testified before Congress that the company salesman recommend such procedures as getting a divorce so the patient could become eligible for welfare payments. Some patients were asked to sell homes, and in some cases the umbrella benefits from private insurance were exhausted, leaving the entire family without health insurance. http://www.cptech.org/pharm/bariloche.html

Yeah, my heart fucking bleeds for the plight of the pharmaceutical corporations.

[Warren Stupidity]

32. rightwing whirlygig thinking

yeah that's the ticket. We're benevolently subsidizing France and Canada. Aren't we just grand?

edit: the numero uno pharma company in the world? Why it is the Swiss company Novartis, of course. Of the top five pharma companies only two, Pfizer and Johnson&Johnson are US companies.

[SharonAnn]

51. That's not true. They want us to believe that we're subsidizing the world, how christian of us, but

we're not.

Honestly, it should be OK that people here die without the medication they need and others are bankrupted by purchasing what they need in order to provide cheaper drugs to the rest of the world?

Nuts!!

The companies make money in every location they sell drugs. If they didn't they wouldn't sell them. And, the basic research that is the foundation of drugs is done by the U.S. taxpayer, not the drug company. And, the drug companies spend more on advertising than they do on research.

[dotymed]

66. Really?

We subsidize so they can have cheap meds? BS. First of all many of the drug companies are American. Secondly, most(all?) other nations negotiate drug prices directly from the manufacturers so, as long as they buy mass quantities, they get big discounts. Pharma still makes hellacious money but not as huge of a bonanza as they make from America, who is stupid enough (politicians are bought) not to negotiate prices. So, they spend huge bucks on advertisements (which should be illegal), everywhere. And Americans are forced to pay $100.00 for $2.00 worth of product. Our laws are bought,er, written so that even after pharma has more than paid off what little actual development costs they have incurred (our govt. does most r&d and gives to pharma free),other manufacturers are not allowed to produce the drug and sell a cheap generic version of it. Be Americans...Revolt or starve.

[left is right]

23. in one sense I am against the reimportation of medical drugs also

Read it through before thowing flame bolts at me

We would be reimporting from countries that have legislated against big profits for pharm industry. That is the correct and proper thing for a country to do for its citizens. That is where we need to focus ourselves. Forget reimportation, force big pharm to sell medicine within the US at a rate no higher than other countries allow.

[rudy23]

26. Except, who will ever force big pharm to do that? nt

[Telly Savalas]

29. How much of this suck ass "journalism" are we supposed to swallow?

It cites unnamed Senate sources to assert the White House is pushing against this. Then later they post an update saying that the White House isn't doing what the article originally claims.

So again it's the case of the Huffington Post reporting a rumor as a fact, and presenting no hard evidence to support the validity of the rumor. That's not journalism. That's just bullshit.

[JDPriestly]

71. Time will tell. Obama originally said he wanted the public option.

Then there was a rumor that he didn't. Then he said he did, but some of his aides said, well, maybe a public option, but not really a public option. Then, Obama came out and said the public option wasn't so important. And now, there probably won't be a public option -- with Obama's blessing on the dropping of the public option.

So either Obama changes his mind a lot or . . . . . Who is lying here? Considering Obama's record of sticking to his principles thus far, I really wouldn't want to say at this point.

[defendandprotect]

30. Agree --

[branders seine]

33. unfortunately, the un-rec/cheerleading squad will not only swallow an infinite amount of shit,

they'll insist the rest of us are closet freepers because we don't agree that it tastes like chocolate pudding.

[Johonny]

35. The Humor in this is

these people always cheer-lead free trade.

[Jim Sagle]

52. That's actually the "tell" - the dead giveaway that you're dealing with

a five buck an hour DLC hogwash dispenser instead of an actual Democrat.

[flyarm]

36. Harry Reid Slips Lifetime Limit Into Senate Bill

Harry Reid Slips Lifetime Limit Into Senate Bill

http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2009/12/11/harry-reid-slips-lifetime-limit-into-senate-bill/

Harry Reid Slips Lifetime Limit Into Senate Bill
By: Jane Hamsher Friday December 11, 2009 8:34 am

When President Obama gave his speech on health care on September 10, he promised that there would be no limit on lifetime benefits under the health care bill:

They will no longer be able to place some arbitrary cap on the amount of coverage you can receive in a given year or a lifetime. We will place a limit on how much you can be charged for out-of-pocket expenses, because in the United States of America, no one should go broke because they get sick.

Harry Reid didn’t agree evidently. Reid, who is solely responsible for crafting the bill that he introduced in the Senate, decided that there should be a limit on lifetime benefits. So when people get sick and have huge bills for things like biologic drugs that cost $50,000 or $100,000 a year, whose bills could become “unreasonable” because Congress is granting drug manufacturers “indefinite monopolies” (per Henry Waxman) that prevent generics from coming to market to compete with them, Harry Reid thinks they should eventually be cut off:

A loophole in the Senate health care bill would let insurers place annual dollar limits on medical care for people struggling with costly illnesses such as cancer, prompting a rebuke from patient advocates.

The legislation that originally passed the Senate health committee last summer would have banned such limits, but a tweak to that provision weakened it in the bill now moving toward a Senate vote.

[jgraz]

39. It just keeps getting worse.

There is no limit to the amount of screwage they think we'll accept.

[alarimer]

40. And it is another example of him breaking a promise

He used to support a similar bill while in the Senate. But now that he has been thoroughly bought off, he doesn't support it.

[freddie mertz]

42. We should start keeping a list.

FISA, public option, no tax on health benefits, drip, drip...

[johnaries]

43. He does NOT oppose it. He SUPPORTS it.

The FDA said it would be difficult to guarantee the safety of re-imported drugs. Obama has allocated funds for them to find a way.

[Telly Savalas]

48. How dare you question the integrity of the unnamed Senate source.

I don't give a fuck if Obama has allocated funds to the FDA.

I don't care if the White House announced that it isn't whipping in the Senate on this.

I made a grilled cheese sandwich today, and the image of the Virgin Mary appeared in it. She told me that unsubstantiated rumors from the Huffington Post are the Word of God and should be accepted blindly.

[walldude]

53. Difficult to guarantee the safety ...

Yeah it has nothing to do with the fact that the US pays more than any other country for it's pharmies. NOthing to see here, no money involved. Just because I pay say $10 a pill for Oxycontin and they ship the same exact pill to Canada and sell it for $3 doesn't mean I should be suspicious of the FDA's statements...

[dotymed]

67. The word "re-importation"

means that it came from America in the first place. "Importation" means it is being made somewhere else. Hell, the word "negotiation" is what it is all about. Just like all of the other nations, we should be allowed (how insane to not "allow" it) to negotiate prices. Just because our politicians are bought and have crazy money, sure as hell doesn't mean that the other 98% of America does. Be an American and Revolt for Freedom.

[ProSense]

68. deleted, wrong place. n/t

[DissedByBush]

63. This is a problem nobody's worked out yet

The pharma companies want their profit. Every company does.

They sell all over the world, and much of those sales goes to countries that have price controls on their drugs. They have to accept little profit if they want to sell in those countries at all, or risk their drug patents being ignored with the countries producing the drugs anyway.

Their profit outlet for this situation is us. We essentially subsidize the drugs in those countries with socialized medicine.

Personally, I don't have a solution to this. Absent a good overall solution I fall back on freedom: Let the people buy legally where they want it, and let the chips fall where they may.

I'm sure my Blue Cross wouldn't mind paying lower Canadian prices for my drugs.

[ProSense]

69. "but a White House official knocked down as false a report "

The drug industry is fighting Dorgan’s amendment, but a White House official knocked down as false a report that the administration is working against it. Beyond that, the administration has been tight-lipped.


“The President supports reimportation of safe and effective drugs. He made that clear in his FY 2010 budget, which included $5 million to enable the FDA to begin developing policy options,” said spokesman Reid Cherlin. “The Food and Drug Administration has raised safety concerns about the current proposal and will continue exploring policy options to create a pathway to importing safe and effective drugs."

link

[gleaner]

76. It sucks ....

between my husband's medical conditions and my own, a good portion of our pensions go for prescriptions. Last time we bought some we called the customer service representative of our mail order pharmacy, Merck and the three of us were counting out which ones we could buy and how long we could wait before they could extend us credit on another. I asked her if she did this often and she replied that she does it all the time. These are mostly generics but some have functions that will probably keep them from being turned into generics because there are not enough potential users to make it worth Pharma's while to produce them that way.

I thought about it afterwords, still missing the prescription which controls my cholesterol and keeps me from having a heart attack one day, and this is just sickening. This is not what I voted for Obama to do, and I don't want to hear from anyone at this point what a great man he is. I just don't. Believe what you want, but don't please try to shove it down my throat or make me out as an enemy of the people for not liking it. Please just skip the post because I am really, really not in the mood to cheerlead for Obama. Not now or ever.

He is taking more and more pages from the Bush playbook and they are as unattractive now as they were then. This is one of the worst. In most cases some facet of your life or your whole life may depend on treatment and preventative medications which he now seems to be doing his best to keep us from having. I hope in 2012 to help keep him from ever being president again. He has been escalating this crap from the time he was first elected. I used to wonder if he ever intended to stop it. Now I am convinced that he doesn't.