Democrats are not standing up to "Big Pharma"

Great Debates
1

I’m from Minnesota, 2nd District, and my representative, Angie Craig, is continually touting about how she is “standing up to Big Pharma”.

I fail to see how any bill put forth has done anything to hurt “Big Pharma”. actually, I only see how it raises health insurance costs.

Make no mistake this is coming from an individual that sees the GOP/Republican party as the treasonous, totalitarian fucks they have collectively become.

However…

In almost every industrialized country, there are price controls for life-saving drugs. Look to Canada, Australia, the countries in Great Britain, the EU.

For example, in Canada, I can walk into any pharmacy and request a 10mL vial of Lantus. That will cost me about $40.00. Note that my walk did not include passing a prescription. That is correct… you don’t even require a prescription for insulin in Canada (or Mexico, for that matter).

When I walk into CVS here in the US, and ask for a 10mL vial of Lantus, it will cost me 479.00, plus I need to present a prescription.

Now, the Democrats (of which I am, make no mistake) have been touting their “$35.00 cap on insulin” plan. Their plan is not a plan that I agree with, and I think many of them are lying about the implication of this plan.

When the Democrats say they are “Fighting Big Pharma”… they are not. When they say they are capping insulin copays at $35.00, that doesn’t mean that $35.00 is what “Big Pharma” is going to receive, it is the most you, yourself, as an insured person, will pay for your insulin. But the real cost is still $479.00. And that’s what the insurance companies pay Big Pharma for your insulin. (perhaps there is some negotiating on the back-end but you’re not part of that, and have no say in it. Plus, if you’re not insured you’re out of luck… you’re paying $479.00. Fuck you pay it serf).

Big Pharma still gets their money. it’s just that the cost is spread across all of your insurance company’s members, including yourself. (that is if you’re lucky enough to be insured).

The question is… are Democrats truly against Big Pharma? If not, who is? If no one is… is Big Pharma simply too big to control? Does “Big Pharma” even exist? :slight_smile:

2

My understanding (I’m in the UK with Universal Health Care :sunglasses:) is that the American system of healthcare generates large profits for:

  • drug companies
  • insurance companies
  • lawyers

and these massive costs are borne by Americans.

I note that when the Democrats (who are the only hope for mankind) tried to reform the system, evil Republicans* stripped out a provision to cap insulin costs at $35 for private insurers.

*Of course these days ‘evil Republicans’ is a tautology.

P.S. If you’d like to pass decent legislation in the US, you’re up against the system.

3

It takes 60 votes to get any meaningful legislation through the Senate, so the answer to that question, for now, is “yes”.

4

Are you sure, in the Canadian example, that the government isn’t just subsidising the cost of the drug?

5

Politics is the art of the possible. Without the necessary votes, and in our system you need 60 votes in the Senate to move most things through, the party in power is limited in what they can do.

6

Well, that’s a convenient story, but as Hypatia would have said, in notitia veritas:

$5,032,634 To Democrats

$5,028,453 To Republicans

It seems that members of both parties have their hands out to “Big Pharma” (and the insurance industry, although the breakdown as applies to health insurance is less clear) and the pharmaceutical industry does what it needs to keep everything on an even keel regardless of which party holds power where. If you think that “The Democrats” as a whole are looking out for consumers you are in deep denial. Which is not to say that there aren’t individual Democrats who will press pharmaceutical CEOs tough questions but they are few and far between.

Stranger

7

Certainly money is at the root of most issues in politics. But that’s part of the art of the possible. These are the Democrats you have to work with. Either get them replaced with better Democrats or work with what you got.

8

You’re dancing around the issue which is, to wit, that the Democratic party is as a whole just as much under the influence of ‘Big Pharma’ (and industry lobbyists in general) as the Republican party. When you make some vague statement about politics being “the art of the possible” you are trying to handwave away that the claim of the o.p. is substantiated by objective fact.

That isn’t to say that there aren’t any substantive differences between the GOP and the Democratic party (although the amount of daylight in policy terms is less than you’d probably like to believe) but when it comes corporate influence and particularly the pharmaceutical company, the reality is that most members of either party hew to the line of their benefactors even when it is absolutely contrary to the interests of their actual constituants. This is the very definition of being under the control of ‘Big Pharma’, and the the ~US$10M spread across over a hundred companies is such a paltry expense that it is probably a rounding error in a single advertizing campaign for dick pills.

If there were 50 Elizabeth Warrens and 220 Katie Porters in the Senate and House respectively, you’d see a tidal shift in the influence of ‘Big Pharma’, but most elected representatives seem quite satisfied with the status quo, and do whatever they need to do to ignore these problems and avoid attending uncomfortable hearings where Rep. Porter pulls out her infamous whiteboard and fills it with objective facts and numbers.

Stranger

9

I agree. As loath as I am to usually use the expression “both sides”, this truly is an issue of bipartisan scope.

It’s such a poor deal for the country too, when the legalized bribes are mere millions, but the difference reforms could make to the economy would make billions of dollars difference.

The best excuse I can think of for the politicians is familiarity: when you’ve lived in a country where insulin is $480, it feels like “Wednesday”, not an outrage.

10

Great question. My understanding is that the government sets limits to what the manufacturers can charge for certain drugs. I do know that many Americans cross the border to buy insulin, or buy through mail order, and aren’t required to be part of their government health care plan. I don’t see how that would be possible if Canada were subsidizing the cost through their health care system. But that isn’t definitive proof that they aren’t subsidizing.

11

You are correct, the Dems aren’t covering themselves in glory here. One of my senators is Warren, so I may be seeing things with a bit a rose colored glasses.

12

I’m a bit confused… is the point of your rant that Congress should be punitive toward Big Pharma, or are you saying that they shouldn’t be allowed to set their prices within our current system?

I mean, if the end-user price for Lantus is set at $35, that’s what say… Cigna will collect from their patients for insulin. They are not about to go and pay Sanofi $480 for that same dose and lose $445. That’ll get negotiated down to something more reasonable, like say… $30, that they’ll still make a profit on. And Sanofi will still make a profit as well.

That’s how all this works- the insurance companies don’t want to pay any more than they have to, you don’t want to pay any more than you have to, and so on.

Where it gets weird is when you’re uninsured- then they charge you the full retail price.

There are types of insulin that are available OTC in the US, for what that’s worth. They’re typically older types.

You Can Buy Insulin Without A Prescription, But Should You? : Shots - Health News : NPR

13

Also wealth. When you’re part of a club whose median net worth is over a million dollars, you have no idea what paying $480 per month for medicine actually feels like to a lot of your constituents.

14

By the euphemism of “weird”, I assume you mean “exploitative”.

The pharmaceutical industry wants to perpetuate the notion that their products are just normal consumer products like anything else you might purchase from Amazon or at your local storefront. In fact, prescription pharmaceutical treatments often make the difference between being healthy enough to be functional and employable, and in many cases, literally between life and death. You don’t need to be a progressive, much less a feared ‘socialist’, to recognize the potential and in many cases quite realized actualization for exploitation and gross profiteering by companies calculating that people in need will literally play anything for health and life, and electing to manipulate prices to maximize profits to the benefit of stockholders regardless of the harms to customers unable to afford the enormous increase in price which are frequently in multiples of earlier pricing with no indication as to why such increase would be justified by production, distribution, or research expenses.

As you note, individuals are not able to negotiate fair prices in the way insurance companies can which would perhaps not be such an issue if comprehensive insurance was affordable and available that covered these medications but in many cases ‘Obamacare’ plans provide minimal benefit and cannot get the deep discounts that more premium insurance plans can, which is quite intentional as it allows insurance companies to subsidize their ‘premium’ plans at the expense of those who can only access the stripped-down obligatory ‘free market’ plans. In short, it is a system of health care access that is primed for abuse and exploitation, and unsurprisingly, that is exactly what we see and not in exceptional cases but as a routine business practice.

Health care is not a normal consumer-grade product and service industry, and should be regulated to allow profitability without excessive price-gouging, corner-cutting, and denial of appropriate benefits. Even if you are a hard-core free market believer, you should realize that health care is by its nature a system that creates cartels and ‘partnerships’ that restrict alternatives and deny access to information to allow consumers to make informed decisions even when they have options. In the case of pharmaceutical companies, we actually have a system that deliberately allows them to engage in monopolistic practices through patent and licensing (which pharmaceutical companies use and often abuse to maintain their exclusive rights) in order to encourage them to invest in applied research and development (often hinging off of government supported fundamental research) so the idea that they should also be obliged to consider public welfare in addition to investor benefit is hardly a radical notion…unless, of course, you believe that life is just a commodity and it is moral and ethical to allow people to suffer and die needlessly in pursuit of the almighty dollar.

Stranger

15

It’s weird that the MAGA people aren’t up in arms about the way US consumers are subsidizing medical research and drugs for the rest of the world. Everyone else is negotiating prices with the drug manufacturers. Only in the US are there such heavy restrictions on doing so.

One of the arguments is that reducing prices would reduce research alongside reducing CEO pay and investor profits, but even if that were true, it means the rest of the world gets a free ride on Americans’ drug costs.

16

They do what Trump tells them to do. Trump sees the money coming from big Pharma and effectively $0 from the demand side. You can tell the players that understand the system and benefit most from it, they contribute heavily to both parties. The OP’s position is correct, at least in comparison to the other party the Democrats haven’t done anything significant.

17

Certainly, “because we have to subsidize other countries” is used as an excuse in right-wing circles as to why drugs have to be so expensive in the US. It never seems to extend to “and we should do what the other countries do and let the pharma companies sort it out and maybe other countries would pay their share”.

It’s just a thought-terminating cliche to justify the status quo. And I doubt that it’s actually true.

18

I doubt there is need for any further discussion, there than folk reading Stranger’s posts. With the possible exception of a Warren or 2, no one is against big Pharma, or for-profit medicine. The health care lobby is larger than the next 2 or 3 combined. I remember being surprised, and dismayed, when I saw how similar Obama’s major contributors were to McCain’s. I imagine the same holds true for most major offices. The big lobbies want both sides beholden to them.

Blah blah, $ = speech, corporations = people, Socialism = evil, etc. Until we impose campaign financing limits, corporate welfare is what we get.

19

Yeah, that’s the part I’ve never understood. They bitch about the US subsidizing drug research via high prices, but never actually propose that something be done about it that would cause the rest of the world to pay their fair share.

20

I’m with you, Republicans who demand that Americans have “skin in the game” and “pay their fair share” actively promote a system that directly subsidizes Socialist Health Care around the world.

They do more to protect Socialism than Bernie Sanders.