Do You Feel Like You Live In A Democracy?
DORGAN AMENDMENT FAILED, VOTE ON LAUTENBERG NEXT Today, a drug importation amendment from Sen. Dorgan D-ND failed by a vote of 51 – 48. Next is an alternative importation amendment from Sen. Lautenberg D-NJ. All amendments require 60 votes to pass.
via C-SPAN | Capitol Hill, The White House and National Politics.
One man who will not be pushed around by the drug industry.
Do you feel like you live in a democracy? And no, that “but we’re a democratic republic!” stuff isn’t what I mean. What I mean is, do you feel like those who govern you care what you think? Do you think they generally do what you want them to do?
After all, that’s the entire theory behind a representative democracy. We go to the polls and elect people who can vote on all sorts of issues the way we would want them to; because we’re such a massive nation and our legislative issues are so vast, we really can’t have national referendums on every issue. So we have these folks in Congress to vote for us.
I really don’t feel like I live in a properly functioning modern democracy today.
Today, Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) made an impassioned effort to pass an amendment to the Senate health care bill that would allow for reimportation. What that means is that drugs — mostly made in our own factories and shipped overseas — that are sold overseas can be reimported back here to the States. Countries like Canada use their single-payer systems and their massive bargaining power to lower drug prices. Which means they pay 3 or 4 times less for their drugs than we do. So reimportation is a pretty basic issue — it’s basically free trade.
For many years, our federal government has blocked reimportation at the behest of the pharmaceutical industry. The official excuse is that the drugs aren’t safe — which is nonsense, of course, because most of them are actually American-made right here in our factories and are simply being sold back into the United States after being exported out of our country. Heck, Governor Tim Pawlenty (R-MN) — no grand leftist and a huge reimportation advocate — likes to ask people who point to the safety canard, “Where are the dead Canadians?” The answer: there aren’t any, because reimportation of course is not dangerous.
Yet the drug industry has done everything it can to keep its protectionist racket going.
But then Barack Obama came around. He proudly campaigned on reversing our protectionist rules and allowing drug reimportation. Doing so could save up to $100 billion over ten years — which would amount to truly massive savings for American consumers who are being gouged by these companies. In fact, drug reimportation was one of Obama’s promises that I was most excited about. It had long been a plank of Democratic Party politics, and most people assumed that we’d finally get it done, despite the fact that the Clinton administration repeatedly caved to the drug industry on this issue.
Unfortunately, this past summer the administration made a deal with PhRMA — the trade group of the pharmaceutical industry — that involved them offering $80 billion in savings voluntarily over the next decade (who wants to take bets on whether they hold up their side of the bargain?) and aired $150 million in ads in favor of the broader health care package in return for administration opposition to drug reimportation and using Medicare to negotiate for lower drug prices.
Dorgan knew about this saddening deal, but he’s not someone who’s going to be quieted by party leadership. He quietly assembled a bipartisan coalition of 30 senators to cosponsor his reimportation legislation, and even enlisted the help of former GOP presidential candidate John McCain to make a passionate case for his amendment this afternoon. Yet, in the end, it was voted down 48-51 — you read that right. See, that isn’t enough to break a filibuster, that would take 60 votes — isn’t it awesome that the Senate doesn’t rule by simple majority like a sane legislature? The drug industry won. How did it win? A great article from the Huffington Post explains:
A Democratic aide said that the threat of PhRMA ads is being used by opponents of Dorgan’s amendment as a reason to sink it. Similarly, if Republicans end up providing the winning margin for the importation amendment, a source involved in the negotiations said the drug makers will come after the GOP “with a vengeance — and not just on health care.”
That’s right. A private industry that’s been gouging Americans for years successfully threatened the government against ending its protectionist racket of the said industry — against the will of the vast majority of Americans of all political stripes, according to the most credible polling. And by the way, it seems like we’re about to have to choose between handing over hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to the private insurance industry cartel or letting 45,000 Americans die every year because they lack proper health care coverage — all thanks to our arcane Senate structure and the lobbyist-soaked campaign finance system.
So I’ll ask you again: do you feel like you live in a democracy? I don’t.
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Nope
Man of few words.
In response to another comment. See in context »Which number is less real the $100 billion in projected savings by “consumers” or the $80 billion promise you mock?
I’m 49 and for 80% of my life I took no prescriptions, I’m on 3 common maintenance drugs now, I could drive the 40 miles to Canada and pay $55 for a 3 months supply rather than the $110 they cost in the US which after my insurance company pays my claim, I end up out only $30 bucks.
There is a very wide super majority swath of US consumers that won’t ever save dick from this re-importation canard that would immediately change the whole landscape of global drug manufacturing/shipping/patenting, etc. immediately and quite unpredictably. I thought you were a populist?
By the way, us trade unionists LIKE protectionism if you’re talking protecting US employers from cheap imports to save US jobs.
We only think it sucks when our employers get beat out by low priced competitors (Often US Manufacturers) who set up in countries who don’t pay/treat their workers well and therefore convert the fruits of our productivity and experience into unearned profits for the wealthy and multi-national corporations, eroding or stagnating wages/working conditions and environmental protections everywhere.
What makes you so sure that Obama’s promised support for a bill that didn’t even get majority support let alone the 60 needed would produce a larger, more favorably distributed benefit than what PhRMA is offering him for the taking to just be quiet and let what happens happen?
Some undeserving folks are no doubt being gouged. Know what my “expected family contribution” is for my 2 kids public land grant university tuition is this year? It’s over 30% of my adjusted gross household income, and that’s not counting the $5-6 thousand each kid per year they have to borrow to go with it. I got your gouging right here. And my health insurance is f’ing through the roof. Are you with us or with the Boniva crowd?
I feel for you, and I really do hope things improve for your family. But let’s get something straight here: a voluntary promise of $80 billion, if it actually comes through, and who’s to say that it will, would do NOTHING like what reimportation would do as far as downward pressures on prices.
Saying that it was necessary to get the wider health care bill passed would only prove my point — we have to deal with gigantic interests extorting us to even go anywhere. That’s the point I’m making, and I don’t know what the Boniva crowd is or whatever you accused me of.
In response to another comment. See in context »[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Tweets Tube, Mark Lash. Mark Lash said: RT @trueslant Do You Feel Like You Live In A Democracy? – Zaid Jilani – Youthful Populism – True/Slant http://bit.ly/5RLgy5 [...]
There’s an interesting phenomenon in American politics, which is that we have no political leaders. Here’s why. If a politician gets enough support to be elected, he or she immediately abandons supporters to ‘represent’ ‘all the people’. They become ‘non-partisan’ – and are therefore free to offer their services to the highest bidder. Their positions on specific issues become a closely guarded secret, the better to bargain with, my dear.
We’ve had ‘our’ Congressman tell us that he agrees with us on an issue, but that we citizens need to build support on the street, create ‘buzz’ or ’street-heat’ only to be treated like bums for doing it, because he didn’t want his feet held to the fire.
Are Congresspeople not allowed to take a stand, return to their districts to make speeches and build a movement for an issue they are passionate about? Of course they are – but they don’t, because once in office it becomes about their CAREER, not their people’s needs!
A lot of people who were on board this did see it as about people’s needs. They thought they had to give into PhRMA in order to achieve wider goals. The scariest thing is if they’re right, because it spells bad juju for our democracy.
In response to another comment. See in context »Sad to say, the wider goal they seek is the furtherence of the party, and currying favor with the party for the sake of their own careers, and the campaign money they’ll not get if they don’t.
The only true “wider goal” is single payer health care, not health insurance. Everyone knows this except Washington, trapped in the bubble of its own making, and those who get their ‘news’ from television.
The most clueless people in the universe are in Washington, DC.
In response to another comment. See in context »My experience here in DC shows me plenty here know single payer is the answer. They just do not have the guts to finally just bite the bullet and do it.
In response to another comment. See in context »What are they afraid of?
In response to another comment. See in context »I think I explained exactly what they are afraid of.