Why Isn’t Billy Tauzin at a Town Hall Meeting?
Digby and mcjoan both have good posts on the question of whether or not Obama made a deal with PhRMA for $80 billion in concessions for an agreement that negotiating on drug prices won’t be a part of health care reform. A short recap:
August 5: Deputy Chief of Staff and former Max Baucus Chief of Staff Jim Messina says there is a deal
August 6: Messina and David Axelrod tell Sherrod Brown there is no deal
August 6: White House spokesperson Dan Pfeiffer says there is too a deal
Pfeiffer, incidentally, suggests Brown may have misunderstood what he was told–which (according to Pfeiffer) is that Dems can negotiate price caps outside of health care reform.
Me, I suspect the real misunderstanding is that Pelosi and Brown and everyone else trying to do this right misunderstand that the White House has already decided that the Senate Finance Committee bill will be the bill, and the hard work they’ve been doing to come up with better bills has just been smoke and mirrors to make the progressives think they had some role in this process.
But aside from the question, Deal or No Deal, I’ve got another question.
Why the fuck isn’t Billy Tauzin, the head of PhRMA, sending out representatives to every town hall across the country to pitch the value of health care reform? Why hasn’t Bristol-Myers Squibb gotten Dick Armey to call off the violent hordes at the town halls?
If Billy Tauzin has really exacted the deal it appears he has, it means the pharmaceutical industry has turned health care reform into a giant government subsidy for their industry. Well, then, why aren’t they leading the way in supporting this crappy bill?
Is this a rhetorical question? Because the answer is pretty straightforward. PhRMA wants to have their mobs and get fat off government largesse, too. The circus of the mobs is to distract everybody from the bread being handed out in the smoke-filled rooms. Have I mixed enough metaphors for one comment?
You’re absolutely right.
Which then raises the next question: How would any competent negotiator agree to this deal WITHOUT loud and public support? Is this another epic Rahm fail?
(Yes, I know, another rhetorical question)
Epic Rahm fail. All the way around.
Actually, from the Obama White House point of view, I’m not so sure this is such a bad deal. I’m not saying I like it, but look at what they got. PhRMA’s running those stupid Harry and Louise 2009 commercials. They’re not directly funding the mobs (which could’ve been coordinated for next to nothing, except that outfits like FreedomWorks got used to getting big bucks for doing nothing during the Bush years). And they really do have the opportunity to come back and ding PhRMA next year (not saying they will, but they can).
I think Tauzin was pretty stupid to talk to the NYT. It doesn’t help his corporate masters to be on the front page like this. His story is that they got in first, so they deserve a better deal than the insurance companies. Well, guess what, the insurance companies think they have already won this fight, too. The question is, who’s blowing smoke to keep their investors happy? I’m betting that the picture is not nearly so rosy for the insurance companies. And Tauzin may have just stabbed them in the back. Waxman might just get motivated to take that $80 billion out of the insurance companies’ pockets.
I think you might be on to something. So who is playing the “Obama sold out” card to depress grassroots activism from DFA, OFA and others? Or is that too small to be on the lobbyists’ radar.
Well I don’t think the insurance companies really believe the have won this fight, no matter what the headline writers at Business Week might think. There is a provision tucked into the House version of the bill that is absolutely deadly to their current predatory model. If you go to page 24 of HR3200
http://energycommerce.house.go…../aahca.pdf
you will find this little land mine.
SEC. 116. ENSURING VALUE AND LOWER PREMIUMS.
(a) IN GENERAL.—A qualified health benefits plan shall meet a medical loss ratio as defined by the Commissioner. For any plan year in which the qualified health benefits plan does not meet such medical loss ratio, QHBP offering entity shall provide in a manner specified by the Commissioner for rebates to enrollees of payment sufficient to meet such loss ratio.
What does this mean in practice? No gaming the risk pools. Sec 111-115 seek to bracket in the insurers by establishing strict limits on exclusions. But given that insurance companies have decades of experience finding ways to insure people who don’t need it while rescinding coverage for those that do you can expect that they will find a way to continue that. At which point Sec 116 steps in, it says you can’t make money on a pool of healthy people, instead you have to shell out a set percentage of your premiums in ‘medical losses’ (i.e. actually paying for stuff) or rebate the difference. Which while they don’t label it as such is just a backwards way of instituting profit controls.
Which as a supporter of ultimate single-payer doesn’t bother me a whit, but will make the opposition to health care reform jump up and down with rage. On my reading the reason the CBO forsees so relatively few people in a Public Option is that their analysis assumes Secs 111-116 will work as written and turn private healthy insurance away from its current model based on predation into one based on service, from one where profit comes from exclusion to one where profits come from volume. The Public Option has an important part to play in this but it is not in principle indispensable, the regulators would just have to keep a sharper eye to make sure Sec 116 was not being ducked.
I think a lot of progressives have just assumed that they have been sold out and that elimination of the PO just lets the insurance companies free to feast on millions of extra customers fed to them by the mandates. Well I think some of them need to ask why they think Kennedy and Waxman would just let that happen. I suspect that a lot of the reason the Finance Committee is holding out is so that they can excise some of the provisions. For example they are publicly pushing back on Sec 113 which limits the differential any plan can charge between the young and the old. I’ll bet money that they also have an eye on Sec 116.
HR3200 or the HELP bill with public option are strong bills, But they would still be pretty good if coops replaced the PO, and passable bills without either if (and it is a big if) there was sufficient enforcement. Obama is being way too conciliatory here, but that doesn’t mean that every move means he is just throwing us to the lions. There are still some devils in the remaining details.
There’s no failure, this is going just as they all planned it. Giveaways to the corporate feudalists and a good screwing to the masses.
I don’t think they understand the blowback coming at them, though . . . . it’s gonna be huge, politically. But it don’t matter if it’s GOP or DEM’s in Da House . . . . they both work for the same feudalists.
No, you are on a roll keep at it!
Simple answers to simple questions: Tauzin is trying to spin whatever agreement that he got from “the White House” into more bennies for PHRMA. And his ace in the hole is that he owns Harry and Louise and so far has been using them to promote “healthcare reform”.
Mere speculation: The NY Times article used a quote from Messina and then spun that Messina agreed with what Tauzin said. Makes one wonder why Messina wouldn’t be proud of the terms of the deal. The article comes close to single-sourcing from Tauzin, which almost makes it stenography for PHRMA.
Called to respond to Brown, the White House said there was no deal. Called to account to Tauzin on why they told Brown there was no deal, Pfeiffer reaches for an credible answer and finds it by pulling it out of…Pfeiffer does not want to be the one who scuttles the deal and unleashes Harry and Louise.
Perhaps because the giant pharmaceutical subsidy was enacted 4 years ago when Tauzin the bayou man was still
swinging from the vinesrepresenting Chackbay LA.Big Pharma is running pro Obama-care commercials in the Philly area..I saw two this week In So. NJ on the Philly networks, prime time!!
Thanks so much for this, EW. Another rhetorical question: When will we ever get back to that “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth” thingy? Of course, once you define a corporation as a person . . .
O/T, back to one of my hobby horses. OK, fine. But when is he going to appoint one to the Middle District to replace that Leura Canary?
Obama Taps Ethics Staffer for U.S. Attorney Slot
By Jennifer Yachnin
Roll Call Staff
Aug. 7, 2009, 11:46 a.m.
“President Barack Obama has nominated House ethics committee aide Kenyen Brown to become the next U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama, according to a statement issued Thursday.”
Source.
Eight billion dollars a year for ten years — such a deal! And all they had to trade away was the federal government’s bargaining power over pharma purchases.
Pelosi shouldn’t feel bound by this deal; she didn’t make it, and Obama isn’t writing any legislation. If you want to be the guy signing ANYTHING on Thanksgiving Day in the East Room, you don’t get to make side deals that Congress has to honor.
O/T, Dodd and Countrywide.
Panel: Senators’ VIP loans broke no Senate rules
Ethics panel clears Dodd, Conrad of breaking Senate rules with VIP mortgages from Countrywide
JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS AP News
Aug 07, 2009 12:21 EST
“A committee that investigated VIP mortgage deals for Democratic Sens. Chris Dodd and Kent Conrad has cleared both of them of breaking Senate rules.”
More.
O/T, or more nausea-inducing Blackwater news
Ex-employees claim Blackwater pimped out young Iraqi girls
BY DAVID EDWARDS AND MURIEL KANE Published: August 7, 2009 Updated 4 hours ago
“Since the revelation earlier this week of allegations by two former employees of security firm Blackwater that its owner was complicit in murder in order to cover up the deliberate killing of Iraqi civilians, explosive charges have continued to emerge.
“Perhaps the most shocking of those charges — quoted by MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann on Thursday from the employees’ sworn declarations — is that Blackwater was guilty of using child prostitutes at its compound in Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone and that owner Erik Prince knew of this activity and did nothing to stop it.”
More.
That odd way that Prince cuts his hair — remind you of anybody? It sure does me.
It surely does. Subliminal message much?
Now, if he grows one of those weird little mustaches, we’ll know for sure.
PS Congratulations on your successful move. I hate moving even more than I hate housekeeping, so hat’s off to you!
whu? not ollie? u sure? aim high dontcha…
uh… that would be lowww.
yep. hero worship? or worse? what else did they learn, and who taught them?
Oh, this is freaking amazing. From TPM:
Yesterday in Denver, the nutters were chanting “Read The Bill! Read The Bill!”
So I asked one of the deathers “What page or section is the euthanasia language?”
Blank stare.
These people do not feel the need to make sense, and are the very definition of “unreasonable.” They simply can’t be reasoned with.
Thanks for showing up and challenging them, Kelly. Be careful!
Bingo!! Use their own stupidity against them. Another sign that those people are paid hacks.
She needs to call up that Kenyan preacher and have him remove the rest of her witches or demand a refund.
OMG LMFAO
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http://bit.ly/HR676
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Read our blog http://blog.democratz.org
right. Now who is going to pay for it?
Because PhRMA’s first choice is NO bill at all?
If pharma and insurance gain a few million or more new customers by mandates… and now know all their old customers must buy from them due to mandates, they win.
Couldn’t all this brownshirt BS be about keeping enough eyes off the mandate?
I keep saying the devil is in the mandates that no one seems to want to discuss. According to RJ Eskow, a person who makes more than $31,200 per year is going to have to purchase insurance (due to the mandate) at a cost of approximately $1,000 per month. He or she will be penalized for failing to comply with the mandate.
What is the penalty for noncompliance with the mandate and what is the penalty for not paying the penalty?
Penalty, schmemelty. The government can’t squeeze blood out of a rock.
Where do the economies of scale come from if 20 or more million people are rendered homeless because they can’t afford the fucking mandate!
Looks to me like the only universal aspect of this bill is that people are universally fucked.
Ryan Grim in Huffington Post White House Confirms: Deal With Big Pharma Bars Price Negotiations
An interesting snippet:
Translation: As long as Obama holds to the deal, Harry and Louise will make happy talk.
Remember during the campaign when Obama promised openness and transparency and swore he would employ that with healthcare reform to such an extent that he would put all the significant negotiations on CSPAN? I do:
I don’t think they are being “as honest as they can be”. Pretty much the diametrical opposite actually.
That was before he hired Rahm.
And he did put his Healthcare Summit on C-SPAN. But not what went on in all the breakout sessions.
So we are left with parsing. As usual.
Did you see the negotiations on this deal with Pharma on CSPAN? Because I did not. That appears to be a flat out lie. Just one of many at this point. I like Obama, still, but I have a very hard time getting by the blatant duplicity and dishonesty.
I saw the opening session, the breakout led by Valerie Jarrett, and the closing.
The opening was folks presenting somewhat formal statements with a little bit of discussion. The breakout session was more of a brainstorm of issues that must be considered, with some of the stakeholders laying out their interests.
I suppose that the original idea was that if you could identify the competing interests, you could cobble together something that would come close to pleasing them all. All they could cobble together was the statement of principles that Obama keeps repeating, and presumably some items from the brainstorm that were fed to the chairs of the Congressional committees.
It was none of the bare-knuckles “getting past no”, “getting to yes” process that occurs just short of a consensus or that occurs in hard private negotiations.
In that respect, you are correct. It wasn’t negotiation in layman’s terms.
John Breaux and Billy Tauzin were roommates at LSU.
Breaux went on to be a lobbyist,after leaving the Senate.
Billy Tauzin,after a political long career as both a Democrat AND Republican, retired and became a lobbyist for Big Pharma .
I remember Tauzin chairing the hearings on Enron,just before he left Washington,and expressing OUTRAGE at the corporate excesses of the energy company!!
Here’s an interesting piece originally published in the New Orleans Times Picayune:
Billy Tauzin: the Cajun ambassador | FreedomWorks“Billy Tauzin: the Cajun ambassador”. After fighting for Louisiana for a combined half-century, the state’s two elder statesmen, are retiring from Capitol …
http://www.freedomworks.org/…/b…..ambassador – Cached – Similar
@13
What did they have to say about THIS?
Reuters reports:
A leading Democrat in the House of Representatives who has rebuffed Republican efforts to subpoena records of a mortgage program for favored borrowers at Countrywide Financial Corp got home loans from that lender, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.
Representative Edolphus Towns, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, obtained two loans from Countrywide, which was bought last year by Bank of America, the newspaper said, citing information from the lawmaker’s mortgage documents
The Pharms have Baucus on the hook, line, and sinker.
Besides, Tauzin doesn’t do riots.
Unless there is a bar near to hand.
“Well, then, why aren’t they leading the way in supporting this crappy bill?”
Mz. Wheeler, I’d say $1.4MILLION a day of lobbying and ads is pretty much LEADING the way, wouldn’t you? They’ve led all to way to the watering down of any legislation, successfully, I’ll add, it seems.
Pharma doesn’t have to do anymore than they are doing to get what they want. They’ve GOTTEN what they want, there will be NO healthcare reform, and their profits will increase as people are FORCED to buy insurance they can’t afford from the legislated mandate requiring coverage for all.
Stage is set. And all players opposing reform are licking their chops at the giveaway to them and their industries that’s being legislated by our bought off Congress and White House.
Here’s one I missed. June 22, 2009. Obama announces deal with PhRMA.
Obama announces drug companies deal
Interesting information:
Oh, I remember that. The thing that is missing and that is present now is the definitive hard edge of the bargain, i.e. that there is no possibility of further deviation. The detail in the NYT may have been predictable, but was absolutely concealed by Obama.
I agree with ew that the motivations and actions of the key players are getting awful darn murky. And I am struck by the on-the-ground (can we be honest?:) fascist tactics of the astroturfies. Still, I have to ask: Friends, is this entire dealie not beginning to look more than a little like yet another episode of Disaster Capitalism? I am not at all sure we aren’t closing in on a bad bill that would make things worse, not better, and would put more money into insurance company pockets, not less, to boot. Squandering political capital is never good, but who here thinks the end product is shaping up as anything worth having?
It really helps to read the bills in play before trying to answer that question.
There is agreement among Democrats that rescissions and denial of coverage because of pre-existing conditions has to end. There is agreement that coverage has to be extended in some way to the uninsured to prevent cost-shifting to folks with insurance. There is agreement that the doughnut hole price jump in Medicare Part D must be fixed. There is agreement that prevention must be covered in basic insurance plans. There is agreement that employers and individuals need better ways to compare insurance plans on a comparable basis.
Essentially there is agreement on most everything that could not be put in a budget reconciliation approach under the Byrd amendment.
For a lot of middle class folks with insurance, all of those are worth having.
That just scratches the surface of everything that is in these 1000-page bills.
The key hangups among Democrats are the competitive cost-lowering approach: single-payer, government-operated exchange with public option, government-operated exchange without public option, co-ops (nation, regional, public/private), cost caps; and with how to pay for the healthcare services that must be subsidized if universal coverage is to be a reality.
Right, but without appropriate cost controls, it is a mandated penalty on a lot of people that will not be subsidized, and the penalty will keep increasing. And, there is little to no reason to believe that Obama and Congress will not sell out and gut the Section 116 described @15 above. While I do not believe whatever passes will make us worse off, I don’t have a lot of confidence that what passes will make us a lot better off. Marginally, maybe; a lot, very definitely up in the air. And the real problem is that this is the wad that will get blown; if something transformational is not done now, then when?
Exactly.
Which is why I pushing single-payer advocates to start whipping the Weiner amendment and the Sanders bill and public-option advocates to whip these as a “show of strength” in advance of a vote on the public option bill. And advocating that they involve their personal networks in increasing the number of folks whipping Congress and the personal networks of their personal networks.
It really is time for folks to force this through a compromised Congress.
Thanks. But insofaras there is agreement between the HI industry and the Obama administration that HI profits shall not be reduced, and there is agreement between the pharma industry and the Obama administration that drug pricing is not to be subjected to Medicare-level rates, and any meaningful public insurance option is looking unlikely in the extreme to survive the legislation process, where is there room for any net benefit to the average American, or to the disadvantaged American? And if upon reflection is should transpire that there is no such advantage, then how can a universal mandate provision (presuming such survives constitutional challenge, which frankly I would worry about) be justified?
A meaningful public option is not dead if it passes the House floor vote. Doubtful is overstating the downside.
The universal mandate provision is dead without substantial subsidies. That is more sure than the public option. I’m not even sure that it will fly even with substantial subsidies. And the idea of taxing employer-sponsored healthcare insurance as a benefit is also dead. Congress at least knows that those two items would get everybody riled. And Nooners would see what real outrage looks like.
I dunno, have you been reading Jane? To channel her: What’s your plan for getting the 15 Blue Dog votes it would take to pass any meaningful public option?
(Just to further clarify: Today’s news certainly makes it sound like the PO’s being thrown under the bus and replaced with co-ops, which I’m not counting as a meaningful public option.)
So much for cost control?
OT — 3 Florida bank closures.
can we talk about leadership?
we have a very articulate, probably very intelligent, very handsome, and very personable president.
why is it that he is not out in the nation talking about his health plan?
educating americans about his health plan?
asking support from americans for his health plan?
what is going on here?
do we have a leader or don’t we?
Because it is not yet “his” healthcare plan, except in general principles
What is going on here is that we have a Congress. And Congress would be diddling with the details even if Obama had put forth a real plan.
Do we have a leader, or don’t we? That remains to be seen.
But you don’t need Obama’s blessing to find out what is in the bills and start educating your personal networks.
tarheel dem @49
i sense wisdom and experience in your words.
but, angry as i am, i have to ask:
so the congress gets to set “bad” health care policy
but
refuses to intervene to shape or to conduct oversight hearings on bad foreign policy – iraq, torture, telephone spying on americans?
i’m inclined to say, cynically and sarcastically, “great system we have working for us”.
but, really, i’m thinking how much more fu**** up could american political decision making get?
hmch?