Hepatitis C Drug Cost $1 to Make - Iliad Sciences Charges Medicare $1,000.00/Pill
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John A. Smith, Founder/Editor, October 13, 2016
Why Can't Medicare Negotiate Drug Prices
It started in 2003 when Medicare was expanded to include medications. George W. Bush and Republicans sold out to Big Pharma payoffs and forced the passing of the Medicare Prescription Drug Improvement and Modernization Act. (aka the "Prescription Drug Bill.") The vote was unprecedented because as the vote was going on and the Republicans seen they might not have the votes to pass the bill, they held the vote open for hours. While holding the vote open for hours they "twisted the arms" of their own members by telling them that if they didn't vote to pass the bill the Republican Party would run someone against them in a primary in their next election. Once they got the required votes they quickly ended the voting.
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| Long title | An act to amend title XVIII of the Social Security Act to provide for a voluntary prescription drug benefit under the medicare program and to strengthen and improve the medicare program, and for other purposes. |
|---|---|
| Acronyms (colloquial) | Medicare Modernization Act or MMA |
| Citations | |
| Public law | 108 - 173 |
| Legislative history | |
So Who Profited From The Bill? - And Who Lost?The WinnersThe biggest winner is obviously Big PharMa. After passage of the bill they could charge Medicare and Medicaid any price they wanted for a drug. A common heart medication that cost Medicare $234/yr immediately went to $1,600.00/yr. This went on right across the board.(From Wikipedia:) "W.J."Billy" Tauzin, the Louisiana Republican who chaired the Energy and Commerce Committee from 2001 until February 4, 2004 was one of the chief architects of the new Medicare law.[6][7] In 2004 when Tauzin was appointed as chief lobbyist for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the trade association and lobby group for the drug industry with a "rumored salary of $2 million a year,"[6] drawing criticism from a Washington-based Public Citizen, the consumer advocacy group."In fact, all 29 original sponsors of the bill, within 2 years of the bill passing, were either lobbying or directly working for a pharmaceutical company with a hefty salary. The Losers: TaxpayersCosts: The Republicans knew very well that passing this bill was going to give Big PharMa a gigantic windfall due to the fact that Medicare would not be able to negotiate drug prices even though they should have the biggest "buying power" on this earth and under-played what the cost would be. (From Wikipedia:) "Initially, the net cost of the program was projected at $400 billion for the ten-year period between 2004 and 2013. Administration official Thomas Scully instructed analyst Richard Foster not to tell Congress of Foster's finding that the cost would actually be over $500 billion. One month after passage, the administration estimated that the net cost of the program over the period between 2006 (the first year the program started paying benefits) and 2015 would be $534 billion.[14] As of February 2009, the projected net cost of the program over the 2006 to 2015 period was $549.2 billion.[15] ."In That Bill Was the Provision That Medicare and Medicaid Could NOT Negotiate Drug PricesThe Veteran's Administration did well in refusing to give their right to negotiate drug prices away and was able to stay out of this. However Medicare and Medicaid had no choice and the Republicans gave that right away."Through 2012, Medicare Part D added $318 billion to the national debt (see “General Revenue” on Page 111 in the 2013 Medicare trustees report). That same report projects that Medicare Part D will add $852 billion to the debt over the next 10 years." READ MORE: Medicare Part D: Republican Budget-Busting Former President George W. Bush LIED to Congress and the American public. " The Bush White House lied to Congress about the cost. Within two months of signing the Medicare Modernization Act (MMA) into law, President Bush quietly informed Congress that the true cost of the program would be $550 billion, not $395 billion, over the next decade. When Medicare actuary Richard Foster sought to present the true price tag to Congress in late 2003, then agency chief Thomas Scully threatened to fire him. By the time the program was launched in 2006, the estimated 10 year price tag for the Medicare prescription plan had increased to $720 billion." To attack Obamacare, Republicans forget the lessons of Bush's Medicare reform | |
George W. Bush Lied to America About This Prescription Drug Bill Just As He Did About Iraq To Get Us Into War That Killed More Than 4,000 U.S. Troops - Only This Time It Was To Give Big Pharma and Republicans A Windfall!
From: Prescription Drug Bill: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Brookings
"The House voted first. At the end of the customary 15 minutes allocated
for electronic voting, the bill seemed to be failing. The Republican
leadership held open the voting for nearly three hours until they
succeeded in arm-twisting a few G.O.P. opponents into switching their
votes from nay to aye. A few Democrats were ready to shift their votes
into the negative column, but their leadership failed to get them back
to the floor in time, and the chair gaveled the vote closed. The bill
passed the House by a single vote."
"The bill indisputably and significantly deepens an already horrendous fiscal mess. Plausible projections indicate that over the decade 2005-2014 cumulative federal budget deficits will run to about $4.7 trillion. The Medicare bill will add just under $600 billion in that decade and $1.5 to $2 trillion in the succeeding decade, when deficits will explode. Closing these deficits would require either reneging on these benefits or enormous tax increases." READ MORE
The biggest thing that bothers me, there are many, is that 29 original Republican sponsors of this bill left public service and were given jobs by large pharmaceutical companies for payment, for getting this bill passed. It will cost taxpayers Trillions of dollars and individual Medicare recipients much more. The former President Bush outright lied, just like he did after sending Ambassador Joe Walsh overseas to find out if Iraq had purchased a large amount of material to biuld nuclear bombs. When Joe Walsh came back and told him there was no way that Iraq could have bought the materials former President Bush went on TV and to Congress and outright lied and said yes, they did make that purchase and we went to war. When Joe Walsh couldn't keep quiet about such a lie he went public and the Bush administration attacked him and his family. They first exposed his wife Valerie Plume as being a CIA operative which not only put her in danger but also many other CIA operatives, but they didn't care, they needed to stop him from telling the truth. You might remember Scooty Libby, a close friend to the one pulling all the strings Dick Cheney. Dick Cheney got very mad at Bush for not giving Libby a pardon in his conviction of what they did to Valeria Plume and Joe Walsh. Bush and Cheney were angry at each other ever since then, and never really put up with each other after that. Those 29 Republicans who sponsored the bill and took jobs with large pharmaceutical companies for payment for passing the "Prescription Drug Bill" all left public service within two years of passing the bill and are all making millions of dollars a year, while taxpayers and Medicare recipients are paying trillions of dollars for their injustice.
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