NOTE FROM JOHN: So the Obama administration just helped guarantee that you get to pay three to five times more for you prescription drugs. Are you feeling the change?
There is another winner in the Senate health care bill, besides the insurance companies. That would be the drug industry. The Senate just rejected an effort led by Senator Byron Dorgan to allow for the importation of drugs:
The Senate has narrowly rejected a plan to allow Americans to import low-cost prescription drugs from Canada and other countries.The Senate roll call is here.
The amendment by North Dakota Democrat Byron Dorgan failed on a 51-48 vote. Sixty votes were needed to prevail.
Way back in the old days, when he was a Senator (circa 2007-8), Barack Obama was the cosponsor of S. 242, an earlier version of Senator Dorgan's legislation to allow the importation of drugs. But, this year, the Obama administration opposed the very same legislation. (Several other of Obama's fellow cosponsors, including Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY), voted no on the Dorgan amendment today.) That's because top White House staffers cut a secret, sweetheart deal with the drug industry's lobbying arm, Pharma, last spring, which was exposed over the summer.
Progressives keep seeing provisions they support removed from the health care bill. Yet, the drug industry's deal remains intact. So, consumers get screwed again as a big industry with money and lobbying clout wins. That's not exactly change.
