Drug Companies Make Their Move

Matt Taibbi writes a scathing indictment of the incestuous relationship between our government and the pharmaceutical industry in a posted aptly titled PhRMA’s Big Bribe Comes In.

Taibbi notes that PhRMA is launching a staggering ad campaign in an attempt to get weak-ass language into the health reform bill, similar to that contained in the Baucus bill, as part of a deal with the Obama administration.

Say Taibbi:

Now we’re also seeing pressure from a group of freshmen and Blue Dogs, who have composed a letter to a quartet of House Committee chairs requesting that the Waxman language be removed from the health care bill and replaced with the PhRMA language, which happens to be the language the White House is pushing and which will appear in the Baucus bill in the Senate. The pro-PhRMA language retains the preposterous government subsidy to the pharmaceutical industry in the form of laws banning Medicare from negotiating market rates. It is completely useless and of no possible social benefit to anyone except pharmaceutical companies, but this group still managed to get 60 people to sign this letter.

Money talks, and bullshit walks, as they say.