| The reason that we will never get meaningful healthcare reform (among other things) is that our government is corrupt to the core. It has been bribed and bought-off by corporations and the oligarchy. The fix is in! |
| Just two weeks after pleading guilty in a major federal fraud case, Amgen, the world’s largest biotechnology firm, scored a largely unnoticed coup on Capitol Hill: Lawmakers inserted a paragraph into the “fiscal cliff” bill that did not mention the company by name but strongly favored one of its drugs.
The language buried in Section 632 of the law delays a set of Medicare price restraints on a class of drugs that includes Sensipar, a lucrative Amgen pill used by kidney dialysis patients. The provision gives Amgen an additional two years to sell Sensipar without government controls. The news was so welcome that the company’s chief executive quickly relayed it to investment analysts. But it is projected to cost Medicare up to $500 million over that period. Amgen’s employees and political action committee have distributed nearly $5 million in contributions to political candidates and committees since 2007, including $67,750 to [Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana] , the Finance Committee chairman, and $59,000 to [Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah], the committee’s ranking Republican. They gave an additional $73,000 to [Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky], some of it at a fund-raising event for him that it helped sponsor in December while the debate over the fiscal legislation was under way. More than $141,000 has also gone from Amgen employees to President Obama’s campaigns. On Dec. 19 [2012], as Congressional negotiations over the fiscal bill reached a frenzy, Amgen pleaded guilty to marketing one of its anti-anemia drugs, Aranesp, illegally. It agreed to pay criminal and civil penalties totaling $762 million, a record settlement for a biotechnology company, according to the Justice Department. Source: "Fiscal Footnote: Big Senate Gift to Drug Maker" By ERIC LIPTON and KEVIN SACK - NY Times - January 19, 2013 Sen. Kent Conrad on Saturday declared “there are not the votes in the United States Senate for a public option. There never have been.” Conrad, a key health care negotiator on the Senate Finance Committee, probably knows what he’s talking about. He also knows where his bread is buttered. According to Open Secrets, the North Dakota Democrat has since 2005 received more than $300,000 in money connected to the insurance industry. Only lawyers and law firms have given more to Conrad. Below are other members of the present Congress who have figures above $200,000. The champ of the list, by far, is from neither the Senate nor the House, but rather the executive branch—one Barack Obama, at $1,427,180.
Source: "Pulling the Plug on the Public Option" By T.L. Caswell - truthdig.org - Aug 17, 2009 |
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