Word: bradleys
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Even by the standards of hardball lobbying, it's a startling claim: suicides will surge if a bill to restrain Medicaid spending on prescription drugs is passed. But that's what one lobbyist for Eli Lilly said to Minnesota state Rep. Fran Bradley's face recently. "My phone has rung off the hook with people telling me I'm going to cause a severalfold increase in suicides," said Bradley, a Republican who previously won awards from state mental-health advocates for his progressive legislation...
...Bradley's sin: He is trying to strike an exemption for mental health drugs from the state's "preferred drug list". The exemption was won last year by the pharmaceutical industry, and by mental health advocacy groups which receive funds from the industry. Preferred drug lists, created recently in about half the states in the face of opposition from the drug industry, steer patients toward less costly generics and older versions of pricey new drugs, but allow doctors to prescribe any medication if they call for authorization...
...Bradley wants to replace the outright exemption with a grandfather clause that would allow any Medicaid patient who's already on a mental health drug to continue getting it whether it's included on the list or not. Other provisions would ensure access to psychotropic drugs in emergencies while authorization was sought. Committee and floor votes are scheduled this week. Projected savings from the preferred drug list are $20 million per year, with about $5 million of that coming from mental health drugs if the exemption is removed...
...Bradley said that in Minnesota, he's been told by lobbyists that one drug company may pull out of doing business with the state. "They've been using the scariest of scary tactics," he said, "and they have the most well-paid, largest army of lobbyists you could find anywhere. But we ought not to be paying twice or ten times as much money when there's a generic or an identical drug on the market...
...Gingrich says the State Department is broken, and must be fixed. But for the kind of "diplomacy" he's talking about, the fiscally disciplined thing to do would simply be to abolish it altogether, and replace it with megaphone mounted atop a Bradley Fighting Vehicle...