A Cautionary Health Care Reform Post

I just wanted to point out that Sheryl Gay Stolberg of the New York Times wrote an article today which apparently sought to fluff two of the most notorious culprits in the health care reform process (and it made the front page, believe it or not). That would be former House Dem-turned-Repug Billy Tauzin (author of the Medicare Part D drug benefit and the infamous “donut hole”) and Karen Ignagni (who has pledged that the health insurance industry is working for “real reform,” even though Ignagni, a former AFL-CIO lobbyist and staffer of the Senate HELP committee and the U.S. Government’s Department of Health and Human Services, has done everything she could to destroy the public option).

Well, as a contrast, this Daily Kos post by blogger nyceve tells us of the payoff to Big Pharma in the health care legislation, including Tauzin and his pals (and by no means do I intend to let the Obama Administration off the hook here for their complicity in this, including waiving Medicare drug price bargaining and not supporting the importing of cheaper drugs from Canada or Europe as part of health care reform, as Norman Solomon tells us here).

And part of that payoff, as nyceve tells us, is the so-called Eshoo/Barton Amendment, which will extend the period of monopolies for biologic medicines before they become generic (and much more affordable) drugs.

Please read all of nyceve’s post to find out about the impact of health care reform on real people living real lives and dealing with real misery over our broken health care system (and leave the fluff pieces by Stolberg and her pals for the “pay no price, bear no burden” crowd trying to undo reform at every turn).

Update 10/30/09: As long as I mentioned the Eshoo/Barton Amendment, I should link to Dem Rep. Anna Eshoo's response here.