‘Cold-eyed political realism’ and other euphemisms for lying

In pursuing his proposed overhaul of the health care system, President Obama has consistently presented himself as aloof from the legislative fray, merely offering broad principles. Prominent among them is the creation of a strong, government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurers and press for lower costs.

Behind the scenes, however, Mr. Obama and his advisers have been quite active, sometimes negotiating deals with a degree of cold-eyed political realism potentially at odds with the president’s rhetoric.

via Obama Injects Himself Into Health Talks, Despite Risks – NYTimes.com

Image by rbrwr via Flickr

“Cold-eyed political realism.” That’s the New York Times, scraping the bottom of the euphemism barrel in a desperate attempt to avoid the word “lying.” It’s difficult to reconcile 2008 Obama hopeful rhetoric with the flood of terrible betrayals flowing from his lips these days, including the watering down of the public option and seemingly endless concessions to the private health care and pharmaceutical industries. However, America’s “Serious Media” is never too fatigued or ashamed to help President Obama deceive the populace. It’s not that he’s going back on his promises to voters, but rather he’s being shrewd, calculating, and pragmatic.

Back in 2007, Obama stated that “Congress exempted Medicare from being able to negotiate for the cheapest available price. And that was a profound mistake,” and that “unless we change that politics, we’re going to continue to see the waste that we’re seeing in the entitlement programs.” In 2008, the Obama campaign put out an ad in which Obama criticized the practices of the pharmaceutical industry, specifically the $2 million annual income of Billy Tauzin, the former congressman turned chief lobbyist for the pharmaceutical industry. In the ad, Obama is seen talking to a group of average folks. He says, “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.”

Instead of ending the game, Obama has changed his game plan. The pharmacuetical industry and President Obama have secretly agreed to precisely the sort of wide-ranging deal that both parties have been denying over the past week, reports Huffington Post, which claims to have obtained a memo detailing the agreement.

The memo states the White House has agreed to oppose any congressional efforts to use the government’s leverage to bargain for lower drug prices or import drugs from Canada, and also agreed not to pursue Medicare rebates or shift some drugs from Medicare Part B to Medicare Part D. In exchange, the Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers Association (PhRMA) agreed to cut $80 billion in projected costs to taxpayers and senior citizens over ten years, which is pocket change to the industry a Fortune 500 survey ranks as the most profitable business in the United States even if they end up having to pay the entire $80 billion price tag, which over an extended projection of ten years, is a big “if.” Projections that far into the future are fairly meaningless. For example, I predict in ten years I’ll be able to fly. Check back with me in a decade to see if that pans out.

No one should be surprised that a politician’s romantic, idealistic speeches turned out to be largely untrue. The real travesty here is that the media is acting as an accomplice to the American people’s misunderstanding of the real issues at play here, while the pharmaceutical industry continues to quietly bribe their public officials (drug makers donated $20 million to federal candidates in the 2008 election cycle.) Describing a backdoor deal between the White House and pharmaceutical industry as “cold-eyed political realism” is laughable, irresponsible doublespeak that should make any decent journalist hang their head in shame.

One of the issues the American people need to understand is that they fund most of the Research and Development for the pharmaceutical industry. While the real, gritty work of making medicine is done by scientists in government-funded university labs, paid for by citizens’ taxes, giant drug companies wait until they can swoop in and throw money into stockpiling certain chemicals and funding various trials at the very end of the process. In return, they own the exclusive patents to those medicines that they then sell back to the people at inflated prices. Since the drug companies have exclusivity rights, this means that cheaper generic drugs cannot legally be made for poor people, who cannot afford brand name prices. This process is sometimes deadly, as journalist Johann Hari reports:

The drug companies who owned the patent for AIDS drugs went to court to stop the post-Apartheid government of South Africa producing generic copies of it – which are just as effective – for $100 a year to save their dying citizens. They wanted them to pay the full $10,000 a year to buy the branded version – or nothing. In the poor world, the patenting system every day puts medicines beyond the reach of sick people.

Perhaps the drugs companies should adopt the New York Times strategy and call this some “cold-eyed realism.” It’s just business. Nothing personal.

The pharmaceutical industry’s old song and dance is that they need to charge exorbitant fees for drugs in order to fund Research and Development, but a study by Dr Marcia Angell, the former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, says that only 14 percent of their budgets go on developing drugs, usually at the uncreative final part of the drug-trail. The rest goes on marketing and profits.

What we have here is an industry that uses taxpayer money to create life-saving products — which the industry claims to own exclusively — that they then sell back to taxpayers at inflated prices, while the taxpayers’ President quietly makes backdoor deals with the industry to make sure healthcare reform can’t possibly threaten the whole rotten process. Meanwhile, the President doesn’t have to worry that any of his sunny words about “hope” and “change” in healthcare reform will come back and bite him on the ass because a complacent media, desperately and pathetically longing for insider access to circles of the Serious and Powerful, will act as apologists for this blatant betrayal and call the President’s lies “cold-eyed realism.”

Thank God for the mainstream media, or President Obama would really look bad right now.