Over the passed few years, the price of common brand name prescription drugs have experienced an incredible level of inflation significantly higher than both regular inflation and even medical inflation, according to the Government Accountability Office. Yet, at the same time, the cost of common generic drugs has fallen. Here we have another great reminder [...]

Yesterday, Ezra Klein was talking about the relative profitability of different parts of the health care sector. Looking at the data, what stuck out to me wasn’t just how unbelievably profitable the major drug manufacturers were (with 23 percent net profit margins), but how dramatically more profitable they were than the rest of the health [...]

[ed. note: This is another post in Firedoglake’s semi-regular series exposing and exploring ways in which the federal government spends vast sums or forsakes vital revenue in a perpetual, profligate and pathetic quest to assure corporate America that the elected representatives of we the people are really, truly, madly, deeply “business friendly.” With each story, [...]

Tim Carney says Goldman is using the GOP and the Democrats for a one-two punch to game regulation reform, just like the drug companies and AHIP did on the health care bill: At least three times in Goldman’s conference call Tuesday, spokesmen trumpeted the firm’s support for more federal control. Vague public calls for “reasonable [...]

Harry Reid, who is solely responsible for crafting the bill that he introduced in the Senate, decided that there should be a limit on lifetime benefits. So when people get sick and have huge bills for things like biologic drugs that cost $50,000 or $100,000 a year, whose bills could become “unreasonable” because Congress is granting drug manufacturers “indefinite monopolies” (per Henry Waxman) that prevent generics from coming to market to compete with them, Harry Reid thinks they should eventually be cut off.

During a conference call with reports Peter Orszag defended the Senate health care reform bill’s minor cost-control measures: Orszag suggested that others who have questioned the bill haven’t been as thorough as Brownstein. He noted that The Atlantic reporter identified specific pages of the bill while interviewing him for the piece. “I would say to [...]

Ask Sherrod Brown to save us from PhRMA and the Eshoo/Hagan/ lobbyist-written biologics legislation HERE.

Well, we now know that 42 bipartisan members of the House were willing to act act as PhRMA’s fax machines. I guess it shouldn’t have been a surprise — 80 House Dems signed a letter to Henry Waxman, telling him to substitute the White House PhRMA deal for his own much stronger language.

The question is, what are the Senate Democrats going to do about it?

When important cancer drugs can’t go into cheaper generic forms, and cancer and AIDS patients around the world can’t afford them, they should all remember the helpful role they played.

The rest of us can ask Sherrod Brown to save us from PhRMA and this truly shitty piece of lobbyist-written legislation HERE.

The Republican’s have just released their “alternative” bill to the Democrats’ health care reform legislation. It is frankly a meaningless, very long press release, filled with some really bad ideas. The Republicans did find basically only one section of the Democrats’ reform bill they really liked. In fact, the Republicans thought it was such a [...]

While I was searching for Henry Waxman’s comments about Anna Eshoo’s PhRMA boondoggle which will leave cancer patients in financial ruin just to pay for lifesaving biologic drugs, I came across a bizarre claim from her cosponsor Jay Inslee. He seems to believe that these companies need to be granted a monopoly on these drugs [...]