Word: reformations
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...recipients. Instead, that task was delegated to private insurers and their agents, who Democrats argued - and still argue - don't have the muscle to get the steep discounts that a huge government program could. "Direct negotiation for lower prescription-drug prices is directly related to our lobbying- and ethics-reform legislation," Rahm Emanuel, then the chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, told the New York Times in January 2007. Both were needed, he said, "to make sure that special interests do not control what happens in Congress." The Medicare bill passed the House but died in the Senate...
...Senate health bills were turning out to be more expensive than expected and would fail to curb rising health-care costs, the industry offered to take an $80 billion hit. Since then, drug companies have been pitching in to mobilize public support for President Obama's drive to reform health care, including collaborating with their onetime adversary, the health-reform-advocacy organization Families USA, to bring back "Harry and Louise," the fictitious couple whose ad campaign did so much to kill a health-care overhaul when the Clintons tried it in 1994. This time, Harry and Louise are arguing...
...privately not to push for anything beyond the $80 billion in savings that the industry promised over the next 10 years. "The President encouraged this approach," deputy chief of staff Jim Messina told the Times. He wanted to bring all the parties to the table to discuss health-insurance reform...
...Medicare drug plan. In just the first two years of the program, that shift of beneficiaries from one program to the other produced an estimated $3.7 billion windfall for the industry, according to a report last year by the Democratic staff of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee...
...commitment is not inconsequential. At least $30 billion will go directly toward discounts that lower the cost of drugs to seniors who get caught in Medicare's infamous gap in coverage known as the "doughnut hole." But the real boost that the drug lobby is giving to the health-reform effort is a political one. Ken Johnson, a spokesman for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, insists his organization is wholeheartedly behind the idea of comprehensive health reform. And as he puts it, "We are a force to be reckoned with, but we're also a great friend...