Gov. Rick Perry’s Drug Problem - Democratic Underground

McCamy Taylor

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Mon Nov-22-10 07:54 PM
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Gov. Rick Perry’s Drug Problem

Gov. Rick Perry has put his foot into it (it being a big heaping pile of cow shit) exactly three times while governor of Texas. His government participated in the cover up of child sexual abuse at Texas Youth Correctional facilities prior to the 2006 election:

http://www.txdemocrats.org/2009/11/16/state-agency-scandal-1-texas-youth-commission-covers-up-systemic-child-abuse/

In 2007, he vetoed a massively popular law that would have protected Texans from eminent domain claims (of the type that allowed George W. Bush to seize private property to build a private ballpark in Arlington).

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/special/07/legislature/4895077.html

And, also in 2007, he attempted to mandate Gardasil vaccine in Texas for all girls over 10 via an executive order. Keep in mind that Perry is an abstinence only kind of conservative politician. So, what the hell was he doing giving underage girls “a green light” to have sex without the risk of divine judgment in the form of cervical cancer? He was rewarding Merck, his campaign donor and the employer of his former chief of staff Rick Toomey. Merck manufactures Gardasil. A mandate by the state of Texas to force all school age girls would have ensured big profits for Merck.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16948093/ns/health-kids_and_parenting

http://www.scribd.com/doc/34588983/Rick-Perry-s-Drug-Mandate-Scandal-Press-Release-Back-to-Basics-PAC-July-20-2010

Study Perry’s career and two things will become clear. He will do literally anything to cozy up to the Christian conservative base and he will do anything for big money interests. When these two imperatives are mutually exclusive, as in the case of Gardisal, he will side with big money.

So, when we hear that Rick Perry wants to get rid of Medicaid in Texas:

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/2010/11/rick-perrys-medicaid-fantasies/

Savvy Texans ask themselves How will doing this make some rich person or company a whole lot richer?

Answer: It will be a Texas sized bonanza for pharmaceutical manufacturers.

Right now, Medicaid plays hardball when it comes to prescription drug costs. “Best price” laws require pharmaceutical companies to sell drugs to the government at the lowest prices available to anyone in this country---including huge insurance plans which often can negotiate big discounts in exchange for bulk purchases.

http://www.commondreams.org/news2005/0307-13.htm

The private sector, which is used to gouging the tax payer in order to get the money it needs to pay its CEOs huge bonuses, is salivating at the thought of how much more of our money it can take---if only Medicaid drug price controls are removed. Here is the Heritage Org attempting to sell the idea of runaway Medicaid drug costs as a good thing .

http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2003/05/government-controls-on-access-to-drugs-what-seniors-can-learn-from-medicaid-drug-policies

If the authors of this Heritage piece were correct, then Medicare Part D, aka the free taxpayer money giveaway to the drug companies, should have resulted in lower prices for consumers, since the law expressly forbids any type of price controls.

So, what happened when we allowed the “free market” to determine how much our seniors paid for drugs? Big Pharm raised the prices of the drugs most commonly used by seniors in lock step , a violation of federal anti-trust laws. Moral of the story: we all pay more for our Lipitor because Medicare does not control costs.

At first glance, opting out of Medicaid seems like a lose/lose for Texas. The federal government more than matches what the state pays for indigent care. That means we would lose over $10 billion a year in federal funds. A fiscal nightmare. The plan is a pr nightmare, too. Most of those insured are children , pregnant women and the elderly—the type of folks that “family values” conservatives like to pretend they care about. Especially those pregnant women. Imagine how many of those 200,000 Medicaid deliveries a year would end up as abortions, if women in Texas had no way to pay for obstetric care.

Rather than discuss in details the insanity of opting out of Medicaid in Texas, here is a link to my journal on the topic:

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/McCamy%20Taylor/560

So, why would Rick Perry risk plunging Texas deeper into debt and/or seeing more fetuses flushed down the drain? Because someone very rich wants him to. It costs a lot of money to run for president, and it is becoming increasingly clear that Perry sees his (long) tenure as Texas governor as a stepping stone to a higher executive office.

Just what kind of payoff can he expect from (secret) pharmaceutical company donations to Republican Super-Pacs if he manages to get rid of Medicaid in Texas? Look at the numbers. According to Kaiser, government spending for health care is rising at a faster rate than private spending. Medicare spends around $500 billion a year. Medicaid spends around $400 billion a year. Compare this to private spending of about $800 billion a year. Out of this $1.7 trillion a year that is paid for by insurance, almost $250 billion goes to drug companies.

http://www.healthaffairs.org/press/2010_02_04.htm

Now, if you are a pharmaceutical manufacturer whose CEO needs two or three new corporate jets, how can you raise your profits without having to go through all the bother and expense of designing a new product that might or might not get approved by the Obama FDA (which have proven to be less industry friendly than the rubber stamp Bush FDA)? Easy. You look at the insurer that pays ¼ of all claims in the U.S.---Medicaid---and you persuade the folks that run it to start shelling out more for drugs. A lot more for drugs.

Ain’t corporate welfare great? All you have to do is buy the governor of a large state, and he will turn around and give you a massive payoff on your investment. For, under the Texas program that would replace Medicaid, controlling the cost of pharmaceuticals would be way down on the list of priorities. By the time the state of Texas realizes how deep an economic hole it has dug for itself, Perry will be on his way to Washington, his election bid financed by secret money from Big Oil, Health Insurers, Bankers and---of course---Big Pharm.

That's what is so great about Citizens United vs. FCC . It allows business interests to barter the lives and health of 200,000 new born babies a year for higher corporate profits.