What has the GOP got against capitalism?

The GOP is currently fighting like mad to prevent the U.S. government from negotiating with the pharmaceutical companies for Medicare prescription drugs. What’s up with that? I like good, strong American pharmaceutical companies as much as the next guy, but accepting any price proposed by a seller is just plain un-American! My grandma would have fits if she heard about this, consummate deal-finder that she was.

[quote]President Bush promised on Thursday to veto Democratic-drafted legislation requiring the government to negotiate with drug companies for lower prices under Medicare.

The House is to debate and vote Friday on the bill, which is one of a handful of priority items for Democrats who gained control of Congress in last fall’s elections.

“Government interference impedes competition, limits access to lifesaving drugs, reduces convenience for beneficiaries and ultimately increases costs to taxpayers, beneficiaries and all American citizens alike,” the administration said in a written statement.[/quote]

Hey, it’s not “government interference” when the government is the customer. WTF?

Of course this isn’t the first time we’ve seen this attitude from these guys. They also don’t like to do negotiations with military contractors or the companies that were supposed to handle Iraq reconstruction. Not only were all the key multi-billion-dollar deals done on a “no bid” basis, most of them were arranged on a cost-plus basis – i.e., payments from the government were structured to give these guys profits no matter how wasteful and inefficient they were at implementing. As it turns out, the American people got bupkis for their taxpayer dollars because Iraq reconstruction never got off the ground. We didn’t employ locals to fix their own country, and our troops paid the price in blood for this stupidity.

On a lower, local level, we also see it in how Republicans perceive our school systems – braying about how teachers get so much money when only a few in very wealthy suburbs get a living wage. Instead of deregulating some of the teacher requirements and supporting offering the sort of salaries that would get highly qualified professionals (chemists teaching chemistry, and so on…) into our schools, these are the guys who keep whining that we can’t “throw money at problems”. Obviously they like to throw money out the window when it suits their cronies, but they want to evade market-economy rules of supply and demand when it comes to our kids.

That was in the very next paragraph.

The government didnt have anything to do with Walmart drastically reducing drug prices did they?

And the “high” cost of drugs is used to offset the cost of developing drugs, which ain’t cheap.

jdseditive

  1. Yeah, I saw that additional line from the president’s PR people but didn’t buy into it. Why would the government need to interfere with normal market economics by not negotiating with companies.

  2. The cheapo drugs being offered up by Walmart are generics, generally. American consumers will save a lot of money on older drugs that may well be good and proven and produced in India somewhere. I like shopping at Walmart and saving money as much as anybody else, but I also am a bit cynical that Walmart doesn’t give discounts without figuring they’re going to make it back somewhere. In the past there have been valid allegations of predatory pricing aimed at taking a short-term hit on below-cost pricing to knock its competitors out of a given market territory, and while I don’t know if that’s happening with the drug market I wouldn’t be surprised. I also get good deals shopping at Costco, and they compete while making a good-faith effort to comply with reasonable laws (c.f., Walmart employees having their overtime illegally slashed, Walmart using illegal immigrants to clean their stores, Walmart not giving heath insurance to employees – ensuring that we the taxpayers get stuck with their visits to emergency rooms.

  3. The “high” cost of drug development is of course offset and taken into consideration in good-faith negotiations. Nobody’s asking pharmaceutical companies to lose money – it’s just dumb that a massive buyer like Medicare would have its hands tied to talk price when even the VA is getting cheaper prices for smaller purchases. A “name your price” philosophy for Medicare purchases doesn’t make any sense for us taxpayers any more than the Alaskan “bridge to nowhere”.

Gee, do you think that the Republican Committee Chairman who pushed this through immediately retired and walked into a million-dollar-year job as chief lobbyist for the pharmaceutical industry( which he arranged while writing the legislation) might have anything to do with it?

Nah, couldn’t be.

Who was the Republican Chairman of the Committee? Just curious.
It does seem easy to believe that the GOP and Dems for that matter, cater to their special interests. I would like to see the political system cleaned up, so the gov’t can start working for the majority (people) rather than those with money (corporations, & ultra-rich). I guess that means campaign finance reform. Do you think it’ll ever happen?

Bodo

Billy Tauzin – on his first day out of office, he started work as a lobbyist for the pharmaceutical industry. The pharmaceutical industry does a lot of great things, but I don’t think any industry should get a free pass on the basics of capitalism.

[quote][url=http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/health/drugs/2004-12-15-drugs-usat_x.htm]WASHINGTON — Retiring Rep. Billy Tauzin, R-La., who stepped down earlier this year as chairman of the House committee that regulates the pharmaceutical industry, will become the new president and CEO of the drug industry’s top lobbying group.
Tauzin will begin work Jan. 3 heading the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, a powerful trade group that marshaled an army of lobbyists last year to successfully support a bill overhauling Medicare and establishing the first prescription drug benefit for seniors. Tauzin was a co-sponsor, and President Bush signed the bill into law a year ago.

. . . . . .

Tauzin came under criticism from congressional Democrats earlier this year when reports surfaced he was in talks with the drug industry about a job. He resigned as chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which has authority over the drug industry, and did not run for re-election to the House. Tauzin said he never negotiated with PhRMA while he was chairman.

Democratic critics of the legislation condemned it during congressional debate as a give-away to the drugmakers because it prohibits the federal government from negotiating lower prices for medicines and continues a ban on importation of identical but lower-cost drugs from Canada and elsewhere. Tauzin warned importing drugs would expose Americans to the risk of tainted or bogus drugs.

Public Citizen, a non-profit consumer advocacy group, called Tauzin’s hiring “yet another example of how public service is leading to private riches.” Tauzin gets a pay package reportedly worth at least $2 million a year, making him one of the highest-paid lobbyists in Washington.

“It’s a sad commentary on politics in Washington that a member of Congress who pushed through a major piece of legislation benefiting the drug industry gets the job leading that industry,” said Public Citizen President Joan Claybrook.

. . . … . . .

Tauzin received more than $218,000 in campaign contributions from pharmaceutical manufacturers over the past 15 years, said the Center for Responsive Politics, a campaign-finance watchdog group.

Based on its study of public disclosures, the group said Tauzin’s total included $91,500 from drugmakers during his last re-election campaign in 2002. That was the first election in which he was chairman of the committee with jurisdiction over the drug industry.[/url] [/quote]

Yeah, politics needs a house cleaning, doesn’t it? This thing with Tauzin is a good example of why something needs to be done.

Bodo

The Bushbots fled from this thread like cockroaches … they don’t dare really discuss their party’s corrupt ways even though it was the “elephant in the room” during the 2006 elections.

Snicker…

Anyway, I am back from the Middle East now and ready to “address” your “issues.” I do have to laugh about one thing though… and I have to admit that you are absolutely a master of this… in an almost deliciously Orwellian way… where like a professor of deconstructionist philosophy, you dismantle words and assign them new meanings… I find it amusing that Republicans are not “capitalistic” enough for you because they oppose “socialized” medicine.

Anyway, (bit of overuse on my part of said word today, apologies…) I do have to give it to you. I disagree vociferously with everything you stand for and everything you say BUT you do have the evil intelligence of a sly huckster to pull off such shenanigans with the most engaging chutzpah. More please…

Fred, the Republicans were very good at trying to sell themselves to the voting public as a whole bunch of things.

GOPpers love to promote the idea that theirs is the party of the American dream, yet they spend inordinate resources trying to protect entrenched wealth and crony interests even when such efforts run completely contrary to market economics and the wellbeing of American taxpayers.

Aparently Republicans are more accustomed to using highly ideological talk (Maoist? Hard to guess what the neocon lexicon is these days…) among themselves, but bear with me a moment while we I draw a comparison to the corporate world. I do like to think of us American citizens as being like “shareholders” in the society we’ve built – our nation was founded to be different than the European monarchies of that time. Would a shareholder in any normal publicly traded corporation allow management to be limited in any way to not negotiate with its trading counterparts? No way.

So, do you actually have any problem with the facts presented? Do you think that it is “capitalistic” in any sense to enter into repeated no-bid, no-negotiation deals with crony companies?