Thanks for this, Jane. Collateral tie-in: Garamendi on Ratigan’s show saying healthcare solution should be changing Medicare at 65 to Medicare at ZERO. Send premiums to the medicare office instead of the rip-off artists in the health insurance industry.

That’s a solid meme for this pharma issue on biologics, insurance issues, the overall obstruction issue.

Rip-off Republicans and Rip-Off Pharma and Rip-off health insurance must be told NO MO’. And that goes for Eschoo/Harmon, too.

No action is not an option. For Congress or for us.

Thanks Jane. I mean Jane Hamsher

“We’re number 37″

http://www.consciousmedianetwork.com/video/110509.htm

This whole business is simply beyond outrage. If vaccines exist that help people, no one should be making obscene profits from them. In a civilized country, the government would seize any company that refuses to cooperate by withholding lifesaving information and/or drugs from the general public through rationing by price.

The soul of this nation, already clinging to life by just a thread, has never been in greater danger.

It’s time for a Constitutional Amendment to ban lobbying, and keep Money out of Politics. Right, I know it’s impossible, but a Fish can dream…

But Tweety insists that the Change Election demands we save Blue Cross dog dems and pass corporate protecting legislation.

I just signed the petition and sent a message.
I’m really not happy this morning. I’m going to send the petition to some friends. Anger can be very motivational.

WTF does JaneHarmon…………..NOT profit from?

JONAS SAULK……is dead

poor Tweety s brain never recovered from his malaria bout…tru dat

Really good question.
Hi, sadly, long time no talk.

good morning!

Hi Jane–I wonder if you could clear up something I’m confused about. The way I understand generic approvals (for non-biologic drugs), the “new-improved” version can get a patent extension, but the “original” drug can still be approved as a generic. I don’t understand how this Eshoo amendment would change that, except for the 12-year period. Does this give biologics manufacturers the right to keep extending the patent on the “original” drug, or only on the “new-improved” version? If yes-on the original drug, is this because of the “data-exclusivity” clause, or what? ie–the generic manufacturers cannot get the data on the original biologic if the manufacturer puts out a new version?

Sorry if you’ve already addressed this question and I just missed it. Thanks!

In a very sexist view, so pardon me. I just hate to see our women who have broken through act like the same “good ol’ boys.” It gives me serious heartburn, if nothing else…The women’s movement was often very much about an alternative….She should be ashamed. End of rant.

Garamendi’s going to be great. I mean, he already is. We should have him on again talking about how the National Association of Insurance Commissioners should not be allowed to be writing all regulations as they are in the Senate bill. In the House bill HHS has more authority.

NAIC is a non-profit and they’re all ex-insurance industry people. They don’t have to say where they get their funding from. They shouldn’t be the ones in charge of setting regulations to govern — the insurance industry.

Ba-da-bum.

Just in case you missed it, look at the first item in the Seminal Reader Wire. Garamendi stopped by yesterday. I didn’t see you in the comments, so take a look if you haven’t see it!

Understandable. I used to know a Black woman who became a Methodist Pastor. She was raised a Baptist and they don’t ordain women. She stood behind the pulpit and preached a fundamental version of the bible that included much condemnation and judgment. We’re not friends anymore. You really have to look into someone’s heart to see who they are. Gender, race, religion doesn’t tell us much about the heart.

The corporations invented the sun and the moon and the stars and DNA. They own everything especially the politicians. Exxon owns the sun and that is why there is no solar energy.

The Pharmaceutical companies are Death Panels that will use the new medications for the rich only. The rationing of “Biologics” for the wealthy and the ruling class is a planned strategy. I am sorry so many scientists help the corporations carry out this genocide. But not Jonas Salk.

Edward R. Murrow: Who owns the patent on this vaccine?
Jonas Salk: Well, the people, I would say. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?

CBS Television interview, on See It Now (12 April 1955);

Thank you for keeping at this Jane.

It is my somewhat informed view that the influence of the pharmaceutical industry.is the greatest factor and scandal that is leading to the already serious deterioration in quality (as well as availability) of adequate health care Reining them in is really more important than regulating the insurance industry.

If I can get my act together I hope to write a diary on the topic..

I’ve been fighting a brutal battle of attrition with multiple myeloma for > 8 1/2 years. Chemo, stem cell transplants, septicemia and a monster drug known as Thalidomide. For whatever reason, this hoary, brutal compound has 1) saved my life (via anti-angiogenesis) and 2) the drugmaker Celgene has been given the exclusive patent; despite much of the groundbreaking research done at Rockerfeller University via NIH grants.
In my case, at least my Insurance Company pays for this evil sleeping pill (it was originally designed as a “sedative” for pregnant women – at least the FDA did their job back in the day- and demanded further testing!) BUT many, many thousands who suffer from my disease end up paying > $2,500.00 a month – for a substance that probably came out of the same lab as Frankenstein, and, is almost as old!! JB

Kudos to Marcy Winograd for keeping the fires hot under the sorry ass of Jane Harman (D-Self Interest.)

…and thanks Jane Hamsher for putting it out there.

Good catch by Marcy Winograd, who has always been a strong single-payer proponent.

you write that like you think its a good thing, whereas in July you were saying things like this about Single Payer advocacy:

Your plan — whether you realize it or not — is to kill any kind of legislation passing that could help those who don’t have health care right now. You just want a lot of people to die so things will get really bad there will be rioting in the streets and then Congress will have to pass something that’s up to your purity standards.

.

post # 65

hm-hmmm. Have you told Marcy that, as well?

i beg you. back off. are you trying to persuade or are you trying to score points?

I’m a single payer advocate too, something you keep forgetting to mention. Your “plan” isn’t to promote single payer, your “plan” is to kill anything BUT single payer.

So please include the entire context, without which your comment is a complete distortion of the exchange.

Once again, trying to kill anything that isn’t pure. Which would be fine, if pure had a chance.

But since we’re not going to get “pure,” the choice is between “not good” and “really, really bad.”

If you manage to kill “not good” that means that “really, really bad” wins. And in this case, “really, really bad” means that “pure” probably won’t happen in our lifetimes because of all the money that will pass through to those trying to stop it.

Those with apocalyptic fantasies of things getting so bad that “pure” becomes the only option will usually admit that this is what they’re hoping for if prodded, as sporkovat will. And most people don’t have any interest in going along with that because they think the moral cost is way too high, totally aside from the fact that it won’t work.

hm-hmm, point taken, and we can let things drop right here, as selise counsels.

but, if anyone cares, a possible tangent would be the question – isn’t the bill now shaping up to be something that probably ought to be allowed to go under?

JH alluded elsewhere to mandates without a PO being likely a bad thing for Democrats, politically?

Those with apocalyptic fantasies of things getting so bad that “pure” becomes the only option will usually admit that this is what they’re hoping for if prodded, as sporkovat will

you’ve got me confused with someone else on that one.

and ‘prodding’ is a kind word for what happens to me in the threads sometimes, its more like ‘banged on’.

i don’t understand your comment about “pure” — everyone, i think, is trying to figure out if on balance the good outweighs the bad. different people will have different answers, that is all.

thanks spork.

I see you are off the fence at post #34 on ralphs thread.

i am. after days of angsting. and, of course, new info or better arguments could put me right back on the fence or even on the other side. but right now i am against the bill as it stands, for the reasons i laid out in scarecrow’s thread.

disclaimer: with the understanding this is a difficult call and different people will very likely see it differently. i can respect that while having my own view.

Will the bill as it is now shaping up improve the system enough to save it?

I’m not so sure that it is enough, in which case I’m with Howard Dean, who thinks that it does have some good things in it.

So why wish for the not-so-great bill as it is now taking shape to go under – why work to make the not-so-great bill as it is now taking shape to go under – if it will help some people as the system collapses?

Whether it goes under or not, the current system will not be saved from the people who benefit from it the most – AHIP and PhRMA types. (That’s mighty ironic, ain’t it?)

I think we should work to make the bill the best bill possible, remain vigilant as the system continues to collapse, and be ready to push even harder when the time comes, no?

If you manage to kill “not good” that means that “really, really bad” wins.

And in this case, where the ‘not good’ does not address any of the structural problems it was supposed to fix, the ‘really, really bad’ wins under a pseudonym: the Pyrrhic Option, Healthcare Reform, Health Insurance Reform –choose your own poisoned PR pill.

Medicare For All / HR 676: a real solution for real American healthcare problems

fwiw, here’s my comment on scarecrow’s thread (there are some follow on ones as well).

This comment is to sporkovat and selise, too.

Have you seen Anna Quindlen’s “Hope Springs Eternal: Assessing a young presidency” in Newsweek (Nov 2, 2009)?

I have to admit that I’ve been thinking a lot about some of the first lines since I first read them:

From time to time the American people participate in a mass delusion about how their government works. Such a delusion took place exactly a year ago, when a 47-year-old African-American who had once been accorded little chance of prevailing was elected president of the United States.

And:

This is a country that often has transformational ambitions but is saddled with an incremental system, a nation built on revolution, then engineered so the revolutionary can rarely take hold.

I’m sorry to say that I don’t stand with Rep. Michele Bachmann, who thinks it’s time to throw out the results of elections and start shooting at each other.

So why wish for the not-so-great bill as it is now taking shape to go under – why work to make the not-so-great bill as it is now taking shape to go under – if it will help some people as the system collapses?

So rather than save the ship and everyone in it, instead throw a few lifeboats over the side and call it a rescue? While that’s a strategy, it’s certainly not a victory.

Medicare For All / HR 676: Everyone in, nobody out

I agree with you, but only to the extent that that’s the right place to start the fight (which is not where the Democratic leadership chose to start the fight).

But if you think you’re going to end up there in the current debate, you’re going to end up with nothing, some more nothing, and a whole handful of nothing. What’s the point in that?

I’m sorry to say that I don’t stand with Rep. Michele Bachmann, who thinks it’s time to throw out the results of elections and start shooting at each other.

none of us do.

please see my comment on scarecrow’s thread. and also the clip (if you can watch youtubes) of t.r. reid (the link is in my comment).

I forgot to add one of the better lines from the beginning of Anna Quindlen’s “Hope Springs Eternal: Assessing a young presidency” @ 35:

Campaigns are bad crucibles in which to forge the future. They speak to great aspirations; government amounts to the dripping of water on stone.

Funny you should mention “if you can watch youtubes.” I’m still working on that. I really wanted to see the Treat not Trick clip that Jane put up, but haven’t been able to yet.

I promise to read your entire comment on scarecrow’s thread, but right now I really have to run! A dopo.

I’m sorry to say that I don’t stand with Rep. Michele Bachmann, who thinks it’s time to throw out the results of elections and start shooting at each other.

none of us do.

My point was that this is the system we have… and it’s not a perfect system at all.

I agree with you, but only to the extent that that’s the right place to start the fight (which is not where the Democratic leadership chose to start the fight).

The Democratic leadership never started a fight in your sense; they started a media campaign to disguise a healthcare industry windfall. All you have to do is watch the stocks of these companies as this legislative catastrophe pitched as Real Reform gets closer to the president’s pen (hint: these stocks ain’t going down).

So if there never really was a fight, then there was never a real debate. And all we’ve seen and heard so far has been ’sanctioned noise’ that never threatened the original end goal of giving the healthcare industry everything it wants from America. The one thing that might have and could still change things is…

Medicare For All / HR 676: the only real option for the American public

thanks! i think you will see that i am trying to combine my ideals with pragmatism, it’s all about trying to recognize the system as it is and then figure out what is the best way forward (not saying my thinking is correct, just that is what i’m trying to do).

later, i’ve got to run too…..

p.s. if i get the chance, i’ll make a transcript for you of the youtube

If I thought that were an option I would be with you, but I honestly don’t think it is. The Dems are scared and they will pass something, because they think they’ll get killed in 2010 if they don’t. They’ll likely just make it worse to get it through in exchange for political patronage in districts they feel they are weak. My guess is they think they can get the ConservaDems on board with the Senate Finance Committee bill, because that’s what they whipped on when they were writing it, and if the House Dems don’t hold out for what’s in the bill now (which I don’t like and opposed the day it came out) that’s where what we’ll get. Then everyone says “Rahm, you got a ‘w,’ you’re a genius.”

If I am mischaracterizing your position I apologize, but that was my understanding of what you were saying.

I’m against it too, but that isn’t really the question, because as I said above, I don’t think that killing it entirely in its current form is possible. The progressives won’t do it.

From the time we laid out the whip count effort I said that this is an enormous game of chicken, and in the end, it’s all about who has the most to lose by not passing something.

And that’s definitely the White House. They will beat the progressives and give everything to the Blue Dogs until they believe there is no chance of getting anything passed by doing that, and they’re not there yet. The other factor is where the progressives will hold that line (if at all). They’re not there yet, either.

Fortunately, in this big game of chicken, the progressives have the least to lose. They’re mostly in very safe seats and aren’t on leadership tracks anyway, and the White House already hates them, so enough of them have more to lose if they DON’T oppose it than if they do.

Well, at least we can make this a tiny bit incrementally better by trying to get rid of the Eshoo/Harmon amendment. Otherwise, I’m calling this the Medical Industrial Complex Enrichment Bill of 2009. And after it passes, all activists should then start a giant complaint center to document: the high co-pays people cannot afford, the high deductibles that will still prevent people from using their “insurance” to get health care, and to document all the health care their doctors advise that the insurance companies are going to deny their insurance payees. I am prepared to pay the penalty rather than be forced to pay an insurance company.

many are of the opinion that passage of a botched ‘reform’ bill will be worse than doing nothing, and that fallout from the debacle of Health Insurance Reform 2009 will rain down on things that matter to people.

for many, the electoral success of the Democratic Party is important. This will be adversely affected when the malign effects of the bill become clear, the mandates most obviously, but numerous other devils are in the details, many of which have been assiduously picked out here on FDL, but there are likely plenty still hidden.

also, the whole notion that Government can improve the lot of regular people will take a hit – a miniscule PO that is a bureaucratic nightmare to qualify for, and a proliferation of complexity in terms of what benefits anyone can qualify for, a safety net riddled with deadly holes, the takeaway will one of greater mistrust and scorn for Washington and everyone associated with it. We know who benefits from that, right? Its not hairsplitting Liberal policy-wonks, thats for sure.

the bad actors will be greatly rewarded, in any number of ways. PHARMA will have their deals honored, their monopolies extended and deepened, and will continue to reap obscene profits off of captive markets. As slowereastside has mentioned, their stocks are prospering, and as the old businessweek article mentioned, they are struggling to keep their delight at the outcome of the process concealed.

And lastly I think the credibility and bona fides of ‘Progressives’ will be tarnished, especially if the likes of DailyKos and the veal pen step up and advocate heavily for the passage of an inimical bill. The fallout from that may effect even folks like here at FDL, whose points of view are much more diverse and autonomous, and who are largely not completely under the direction of the Democratic Party.
these are conjectural at this point, but as selise so tactfully notes:

everyone, i think, is trying to figure out if on balance the good outweighs the bad. different people will have different answers, that is all.

the bad is looking pretty heavy, few can deny that.

It’s actually not new patent protection that is the issue.

Marketing approval for drugs depends on data from clinical trials. A generic drug manufacturer can use the original manufacturers clinical data to gain FDA approval to market their drug subject to some period of exclusivity of that data (12 years for biological drugs under Eshoo’s plans, 5 years under Waxman/Schumers, 7 years under Obama’s proposed compromise). Small molecule drugs have a 5 year exclusivity window.

Eshoo’s legislation restarts the 12 year exclusivity period for the “reference product” (the original medicine) if the manufacturer makes a “Structural change”, a term that isn’t explicitly defined in the bill.

Patent protection is for 20 years, in practice most of this protection is moot as the drug isn’t approved for marketing by the FDA until many years after the patent.

i don’t understand (ok, i know i’m repeating myself a lot with that today). if the progressives have more to loose by not opposing it, then why aren’t they? my rep (jim mcgovern) had a town hall by phone wednesday night (some details on this thread). i got the first question and asked him about his pledge to vote against the bill. he completely blew me off and then proceeded to say things about the bill that are just untrue. it was a pretty profoundly depressing phone call and convinced me that there is no interest in making this a less bad bill.

the cost figures i’ve seen absolutely suck. and i know what that means for the viability of the plan as a whole. this year MA is permitting the insurance companies to add $50,000/yr caps to policies they are making people purchase (these are the young people’s polices) in order to lower premiums. they are also ending the automatic re-enrollment for people who’ve qualafied for the subsidized plan (even though they still qualify) as a costs saving measure. and don’t get me started on how legal immigrants are being treated. in all ways, this is not a way forward, the cost is so great that it requires retrenchment.

on the other hand, may be a totally false report especially considering the source, but i just saw this (listed as reported 20 min ago):

House Democrats acknowledged they don’t yet have the votes to pass a sweeping overhaul of the nation’s health care system, and signaled they may push back the vote until Sunday or early next week.

I think that Dems will lose some seats in the midterms regardless of the outcome of the healthcare bill due to voter turnout patterns and such. If they pass a plan that doesn’t do anything until 2013 and leaves the drug and insurance cartels to rape us in the meantime, they will (and should) get clobbered, and could lose the White House in 2012. If the calculation is that it’s better politically to delay implementation, it’s a bad calculation. The perfect shouldn’t be the enemy of the good, but the bad is always the enemy of both. I’m glad the CPC, you, and others are working to make this thing useful and keep the Rahminator and ConservaDems in line.

We still have a country that with too many people scared to death that bringing all the people on board will sink the ship. They’d rather throw out a lifeboat or two than risk losing what they have by rescuing everyone. I believe single payer is in the cards, but it would not happen this round. I am hoping that instead of lying around exhausted after this round, people keep doing the PR work in the background on single payer so that more are ready for it sooner. I would love to hear people talk about saving medicare benefits for the elderly, for example, by having the young and healthy pay their premiums into medicare instead of to private insurance companies who pass it out in bonuses and don’t help out the elderly. With all the talk that has gone on about cutting funding to entitlements, I don’t blame those who fear that there won’t be enough pie to go around so they’d better limit who gets to be at the table. After 8 years of Bush, I can sympathize better with those who fear how the government would run things, too. Those who fear usually haven’t clued in to the fact that the Bush nightmare was government putting the work into the hands of profiteering corporations rather than a problem with government running programs.

Education takes time and a lot of work. Whatever happens in this Congress, there will be a lot more of that ahead of us because, Obama’s lofty talk about being the last president to have to deal with health care aside, even the best we could get will not be enough.

California’s 36th Congressional District needs to replace Jane Harman with Marcy Winograd. America needs a true progressive to push forth single-payer healthcare and sound and equitable economic policies that favor we-the-people over corporate criminals. America needs a legislator who will fight for peace rather than perpetuate war and cater to defense industry cohorts. Harman needs to go.

In 2006, when Winograd first ran against Harman, she garnered nearly 40% of the vote after a short under-funded campaign. This time the momentum is growing for Winograd. The groundswell is palpable. Harman needs to go.