By Alicia Mundy - May 31, 2012 Newlyreleased emails give an inside look at how the White House struck a dealwith the pharmaceutical industry in 2009 to get support for the health billthat ultimately passed the next year.
Drug makers and their lobbyists believed they got a good bargain,the emails show. As TheWall Street Journal and others reported at the time, the companies escapedprice controls and forced the president to back down on his 2008 campaignpromise to allow the reimportation of cheaper drugs from other countries.
In May 2009, after the administration was hit by negative storiesabout the rising costs of its proposed health care overhaul, a drug industrylobbyist emailed colleagues, “Perfect timing to cut our deal w the White Houseas this is swirling.”
A month later, following another barrage of similar stories,another industry lobbyist wrote, ‘It’s pretty clear that the Administration hashad a horrible week on health care reform, and we are now getting jammed tomake this announcement so the story takes a positive turn before the Sunday talkshows beat up on Congress and the White House.”
The email was sent from the Pharmaceutical Research andManufacturers of America lobby on June 18, 2009, four days before theadministration’s agreement with drug makers was formally revealed. AnotherPhRMA lobbyist quickly responded, “Yes, that’s why they are doing it, but it’salso why we got a good deal.”
The Republican leadership of the House Energy and CommerceCommittee on Thursday released the emails, which they obtained fromhealth-care industry groups that worked on the bill.
The committee is investigating how the legislation was crafted.Republicans say the administration’s negotiations with industry groups weren’ttransparent and were driven by politics.
White House spokesman Eric Schultz called theemail release “a nakedly political, taxpayer-funded crusade to hurt thepresident’s re-election campaign.” He said the 2009 agreement with the drugindustry was publicly announced in the Rose Garden. The administration has saidthe deal was good for taxpayers because the industry offered multiyear savingsof $80 billion on drug costs.
The emails indicate that the White House originally wanted about$100 billion in savings and other breaks, in return for increasing the numberof patients with health insurance and drug coverage.
The emails show that drug makers won other unpublicized deals fromthe administration, which both the White House and the pharmaceutical lobbyrepeatedly denied at the time but were later disclosed in news reports. Theyincluded a promise from the White House not to demand that drug makersnegotiate Medicare prices with the federal government, which could have reduceddrug costs.
At one point, the White House threatened to shame the industrypublicly if the negotiations fell apart, according to an email written June 10by a PhRMA lobbyist. “Barack Obama is going to announce in his Saturday radioaddress support for rebating all of [Medicare Part] D unless we come to a deal.So they are punishing us” for refusing to concede, he wrote, referring to aproposal to require rebates in across-the-bard Medicare’s prescription-drugprogram.
“They can’t get 60 votes for that [in the Senate]. It isn’t even areal threat,” the email concluded. The president’s radio address, three dayslater, didn’t include the lines.
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2012/05/31/emails-describe-deal-making-on-obama-health-bill/?mod=WSJ_elections_article_liveupdate
Hiç yorum yok:
Yorum Gönder