Is this South Chicago politics buying off the drug companies?
Saturday, 15. May 2010
The (0bama) campaign even aired an ad singling out Billy Tauzin, the drug industry’s chief lobbyist. “The pharmaceutical industry wrote into the prescription drug plan that Medicare could not negotiate with drug companies,” Obama said in the ad. “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.”
Now, it turns out, the Obama White House has cut a backroom — actually, Roosevelt Room — deal with Tauzin: Drugmakers would ante up $80 billion in savings in return for a promise that Medicare wouldn’t be allowed to negotiate drug prices.
“We were assured: ‘We need somebody to come in first. If you come in first, you will have a rock-solid deal,’ ” Tauzin told the New York Times.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/11/AR2009081102810.html