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.