The Big Pharma e-mails: Time for right-wingers who call the president "socialist" to disqualify themselves from voting because they're too stoopid?

Sez this "senior Democratic official involved in the talks" (let's call him Mr. ?), "There was no way we had the votes in either the House or the Senate if PhRMA was opposed -- period."


"Just like that, Mr. Obama’s staff abandoned his support for the reimportation of prescription medicines at lower prices and with it solidified a growing compact with an industry he had vilified on the campaign trail the year before. Central to Mr. Obama’s drive to overhaul the nation’s health care system was an unlikely collaboration with the pharmaceutical industry that forced unappealing trade-offs."

-- from the NYT's Peter Baker's "Lobby E-Mails
Show Depth of Obama Ties to Drug Industry"

by Ken

Actually, the most surprising thing about this batch of e-mails, which document the kind of collaboration -- or collusion, if you prefer -- that went on between the Obama administration and Big Pharma during the struggle for so-called health-care reform, isn't any of the squalid detail that emerges there. As NYT reporter Baker notes, "The broad contours of the president’s dealings with the drug industry were known in 2009." But, he adds, "the newly public e-mails open a window into the compromises underlying a health care overhaul now awaiting the judgment of the Supreme Court." And indeed it's good to have these morsels of detail. As I say frequently, I'm a nuts-'n'-bolts kind of guy.

But what has me shaking my head is the source of the e-mails:

a cache of messages obtained from the industry and released in recent weeks by House Republicans -- including a new batch put out on Friday morning detailing the industry’s advertising campaign in favor of Mr. Obama’s proposal

Did you get that? These shocking revelations about collaboration between drug-industry lobbyists and the Obama administration come from House Republicans, who apparently think they've got a real gotcha moment here.

Republicans see the deal as hypocritical. “He said it was going to be the most open and honest and transparent administration ever and lobbyists won’t be drafting the bills,” said Representative Michael C. Burgess of Texas, one of the Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee that is examining the deal. “Then when it came time, the door closed, the lobbyists came in and the bills were written.”

Somebody has lost his friggin' mind here, and I don't think it's me -- though my poor mind is being stoutly blown. What this doodyhead Burgess is saying is: They're almost as stinking corrupt as we are!

Is this going to be a theme of the 2012 campaign? Sure, we Republicans don't have an honest bone in our bodies, but they suck too. Vote Republican!

I was relieved to see that it wasn't just my head that has been set spinning.

Some of the liberals bothered by the deal-making in 2009 now find the Republican criticism hard to take given the party’s long-standing ties to the pharmaceutical industry.

“Republicans trumpeting these e-mails is like a fox complaining someone else raided the chicken coop,” said Robert Reich, the former labor secretary under President Bill Clinton. “Sad to say, it’s called politics in an era when big corporations have an effective veto over major legislation affecting them and when the G.O.P. is usually the beneficiary. In this instance, the G.O.P. was outfoxed. Who are they to complain?”

Of course, that dimension of reality aside, what's in those e-mails certainly does stink. Here's Peter Baker telling the story:

After weeks of quiet talks, drug industry lobbyists were growing nervous. If they were to cut a deal with the White House on overhauling health care, they needed to be sure President Obama would stop a proposal by his liberal allies intended to bring down medicine prices.

On June 3, 2009, one of the lobbyists e-mailed Nancy-Ann DeParle, the president’s top health care adviser. Ms. DeParle sent a message back reassuring the lobbyist. Although Mr. Obama was overseas, she wrote, she and other top officials had “made decision, based on how constructive you guys have been, to oppose importation on the bill.”

Just like that, Mr. Obama’s staff abandoned his support for the reimportation of prescription medicines at lower prices and with it solidified a growing compact with an industry he had vilified on the campaign trail the year before. Central to Mr. Obama’s drive to overhaul the nation’s health care system was an unlikely collaboration with the pharmaceutical industry that forced unappealing trade-offs

Just like that! Poof!

The explanation comes from "a senior Democratic official involved in the talks," who you'll note doesn't dare let himself be quoted by name. He's here to tell us, though not for attribution: "There was no way we had the votes in either the House or the Senate if PhRMA was opposed -- period."

The White House has an even better explanation, and this one's on the record.

Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director, said the collaboration with industry was in keeping with the president’s promise to build consensus.

Ah yes, good old consensus! There's no doubt that candidate Obama promised lots of consensus, just like he promised all that airy openness.

It's discouraging but not really surprising to find Rep. Henry Waxman, "the top Democrat on the House committee and one of those who balked at Mr. Obama’s deal in 2009," now "defend[ing] it as traditional Washington lawmaking":

“Presidents have routinely sought the support and lobbying clout of private industry in passing major legislation,” Mr. Waxman’s committee staff said in a memo released in response to the e-mails. “President Obama’s actions, for example, are no different than those of President Lyndon B. Johnson in enacting Medicare in 1965 or President George W. Bush in expanding Medicare to add a prescription drug benefit in 2003.”

I agree that what we're seeing here resembles the frantic dirty dealings of the Bush regime in crafting its prescription-drug-benefit gift to Big Pharma. However, I think some serious distinctions ought to be made between this and what Lyndon Johnson had to do to get Medicare enacted -- not least that Lyndon Johnson got Medicare enacted, whereas what President Obama got was a package that some of us still aren't persuaded was better than nothing.

Peter Baker brings up this embarrassing Obama campaign ad claim:

“The pharmaceutical industry wrote into the prescription drug plan that Medicare could not negotiate with drug companies,” Mr. Obama said in a campaign advertisement, referring to Mr. Bush’s 2003 legislation. “And you know what? The chairman of the committee who pushed the law through went to work for the pharmaceutical industry making $2 million a year.

“Imagine that,” Mr. Obama continued. “That’s an example of the same old game playing in Washington. You know, I don’t want to learn how to play the game better. I want to put an end to the game playing.”

Oh. Well, as Emily Litella used to say, never mind. It may not be enough to make you want to vote for the naturally corrupt Republicans, but it may be enough to help persuade you not to vote for Democrats, which is both (a) entirely understandable and (b) from a Republican campaign strategist's standpoint the next-best thing.

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