Follow the Money The Push For Healthcare

A Rancid Deal with Big Pharma

By William Greider
August 8, 2009

Published by The Nation.

So now we know why the president wants everyone to make nice in the healthcare debate. His White House has cut a deal with Big Pharma that smells like the same old rotten politics that candidate Obama regularly denounced and promised to end. The drug industry agrees to deliver $80 billion in future savings and the president promises the government will not use its awesome purchasing power to negotiate lower drug prices
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Reminiscent of Fascist Dictators, Thugish Dems Threaten Private Business

In a move some fear is a reprisal for opposing President Obama’s health care plan, Democrats sent 52 letters to health insurers requesting financial records for a House committee’s investigation.

Reps. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and Bart Stupak, D-Mich., sent a letter warning health insurers that the House Energy and Commerce Committee is “examining executive compensation and other business practices of the health industry.”
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Drug Companies Have a Seat at the Table
Source: Chicago Tribune | August 9, 2009

By Tom Hamburger

Aug. 9, 2009 (McClatchy-Tribune News Service delivered by Newstex) — WASHINGTON — As a candidate for president, Barack Obama lambasted drug companies and the influence they wield in Washington. He even ran a television ad targeting the industry’s chief lobbyist, former Louisiana Congressman Billy Tauzin, and the role Tauzin played in preventing Medicare from negotiating for lower drug prices.
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Obama Campaign Ad Firms Signed On to Push Health-Care Overhaul
By Timothy J. Burger

Aug. 15 (Bloomberg) — Two firms that received $343.3 million to handle advertising forBarack Obama’s White House run last year have profited from his top priority as president by taking on his push for health-care overhaul.

One is AKPD Message and Media, the Chicago-based firm headed by David Axelrod until he left last Dec. 31 to serve as a senior adviser to the president. Axelrod was Obama’s top campaign strategist and is now helping sell the health-care plan
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Big Business Goes Big for Health-Care Reform
By John Stossel

August 12,2009 “What disturbs Americans of all ideological persuasions is the fear that almost everything, not just government, is fixed or manipulated by some powerful hidden hand,” Frank Rich wrote in Sunday’s New York Times.

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~ by riffenberg on August 19, 2009.