Attempting The No-Flop Flip?

"We had to kill the health care legislation in order to pass it."

I hope the President is asked about it. After "change we can believe in" I want to know what all ths wink wink nod nod stuff is about. No matter how you analyse this the WH comes out looking bad. One simply cannot be all things to all people. It is not as if the WH did not know what opponent of reform would do.

Leaving Congress to do the heavy lifting may well prove to be fatal.

Sigh. The Obama Administration's communications shop is just so small-time and incompetent that this comes as no surprise at all. These people are in waaayyyy over their heads. Obama needs to fire Ellen Moran and get a professional in there. Replace Gibbs while they are at it. Where the hell are these people that they have been caught flatfooted by the vicious pushback on health insurance reform? Oh, and while you are at it, can you hogtie Rahmbo, stuff a rag in his mouth and put him in the basement for a few months?

A question: Assume the deal is done and that it can't be changed by Congress (and that's far from clear), Obama appears to have agreed not to have a provision for negotiating drug prices in exchange for guaranteed savings of $80 billion.

Does anyone know (with credible sources please) how much the savings would have been had there been no agreement from the drug companies to make those savings and negotiation was allowed?

Once you have that figure, can someone work out how much it would cost additionally to the government to actually conduct and execute those negotiations (staff costs, additional costs of the drugs without savings pending an agreement etc?)

Now, put a dollar amount on the value of having PhrMa support healthcare reform or at least hold back from blanket advertisements against reform.

Now, put a dollar amount on the fact that the PhrMa companies aren't really going to resist a public option either.

I don't know what the answers are but it isn't beyond the realm of possibility that such a deal would be a net benefit to the cause of healthcare reform.

A final two points that go unnoticed:

- the deal only lasts for 10 years!! I've said this repeatedly and it seems to be completely ignored. After 10 years the deal is off or will be renegotiated. Healthcare reform is a long term enactment, it's not something that is only going to last 10 years so any deal like this certainly leaves the possiblity of further and better deals down the road.

- Drug companies, for all their vilification as ugly corporates, actually do provide a worthwhile and good product to society. They can actually save money in the long run (for example, the anti-ulcer drug Losec (that's what it's called in UK) made it easy to treat ulcers without having expensive and dangerous operations. A significant sum of money would have been saved by this even if the pill itself might be considered expensive. Of course they will want to maximise their profits and sell drugs as expensively as they can but there is a stark difference between them (since you actually get a valuable product and additional money can go back into R&D) and, say, the insurance companies who basically only are middle men providing what is essentially an unnecessary service.

Will PhRMA renege on its $80 billion pledge if Congress passes health care reform that allows the government to negotiate for lower drug prices? And will it abandon its pledge to run $150 million worth of television ads in favor of the president's agenda if it believes price controls are still on the table.

The first question is presumably meaningless. If (as everyone assumes), there's more saving to be acheived through the government negotiation process then no one should care a whit about whether they intend to honor the 80 billion pledge
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If OTOH the 80 billion is a reasonable amount then everyone should STFU about what could be.

The actual question of PhRMA's contribution is the ad buys and the public support.

Michael Scherer:
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in order to win drug industry support...it remains likely at this point that drug negotiation will not be in health care reform
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While there certainly is a story in Obama's flip-flopping on how health care reform would be carried out, it (weirdly) seems as if the important part of this is largely being lost on the political press corps:
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A popular President who handily won an election with a mandate for change, who ran specifically on a transparent, public interest-first reform process, and who enjoys an unprecedented level of technologically organized citizen support must preemptively surrender a public relations battle to the pharma-industry the first sweetheart months of his Presidency.
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The story isn't so much that he flip-flopped, but why he turned around, don't you think, Michael Scherer?
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Sam Stein seems to think that the why is an afterthought as well:

The questions that still need to be answered are: Will PhRMA renege on its $80 billion pledge if Congress passes health care reform that allows the government to negotiate for lower drug prices? And will it abandon its pledge to run $150 million worth of television ads in favor of the president's agenda if it believes price controls are still on the table

How is it that you guys aren't even blinking at that deal?
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This is straight out of the script of Health Reform's Indecent Proposal, Michael Scherer, don't you think?
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Either Obama is a total coward who can't stomach a fight on behalf of what he clearly knows are the American people's interests, or he's just working with the reality that legal industry cartels are powerful enough at public relations wars to make governance without their consent impossible. Either conclusion is a bombshell, isn't it?
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Why aren't you guys screaming your heads off about that huge, unbelievable knockout of a story:
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in order to win drug industry support…it remains likely at this point that drug negotiation will not be in health care reform
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, using the Obama flip-flop as a point in that bombshell, instead of vice-versa?
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Isn't, you know, overt, third world-style industry control over the President's and Congress's policy path the main story, Michael Scherer?

homerk: my grandparents lived in Otford, and I used Sevenoaks as a base during holidays while down from college. They have passed on, I was born in Cheltenham.

On the wait and see suggestion: I'd be the first to agree if I knew Obama was engaged and his team had control of "their" message. My disappointment stems from a comparison between the outstanding message machine we saw at work in the campaign and the one now in place. I watched Lynn Douglas yesterday and she was good. But it is all about damage control. That's not good.

The next time you are trying to write a false equivalency article about how the lefties are exactly like the sycophant right-wingers who defended Bush through thick and thin, I ask that you think about situations like this or the fight to find some accountability in the whole torture mess. JNS who are prone to writing those articles as well.

homerk: My Mom is a Yank so I became one; and I have much to be thankful for both here and back home. My Dad is British through and through.

My frustration stems from knowing how well we carried out our tasks during the campaign. I worked hard and did not regret one bit. I know that governing is not the same. But I see our side and making a fetish of bipartisanship with a Republican minority that is openly cynical and dishonest.

I'd rather stand or fall for what I believe in. Sure, one has to be open to a compromise. That is the best way in the end. But do you see Republicans open to that. When did the Republicans ever introduce legialation on health care?

Our journalistic/punditocracy are no help. their distortions are part of the problem.

So if we have two Brits on the thread perhaps you could discuss how absolutely horrible your health care system is and how if America does anything to improve its situation it will become disasterously identical to the British nightmare....
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Or not.

@sevenoaks (now, only, oneoak, sadly): It strikes me that much of the messaging in the campaign was carried out by the volunteers and websites that weren't necessarily strictly connected to the Obama campaign. Now, those websites seem mainly to either despair of Obama or just aren't getting as much publicity/airtime as previously. I agree that the media in the US is an absolute disgrace (present company excluded).

@Paul, both my parents are/were GP's (my father passed away a few years back but my mum still works) in the NHS. Between the two of them, they serviced about 5,000 patients in their town and did home visits for those patients who couldn't get to the surgery. They have had a very comfortable life, albeit nothing compared to their brothers and sisters who moved to the US to become doctors! The NHS, for all its faults (and it has them!) is, in my view, one of the best things about this country. It is taken for granted and, therefore, sometimes vilified. My parents' common complaint was that there was too little education of the public as to when is appropriate to see your doctor. Because it was free, they would get patient in to complain about their children picking their nose or fungus on their walls (true stories!).

I will say this: before the labour government got in in 1997 we had 18 years of conservative rule (conservatives being similar to I guess the blue dog democrats with maybe some republicans at the right fringe of the party) and the NHS was a bit of a disaster. When Tony Blair and the labour party came into power, there was a massive investment in the NHS, waiting times for surgeries were drastically cut and investments in technology were made.

There are private insurance companies here but I don't think they've got much of a market share - probably some employer based coverage but I bet it's not used that much. I have private health care through my employer but I have never used it - I go to the local NHS doctor if I ever need to do anything (or to my mum!) and I think that's not uncommon for many employees who have their local GPs where they live and don't really see the need for private insurance.

As I think I've posted here before, my father had treatment for cancer both here and in the US. The only difference was that it came to a stage where the NHS said no more (after 4 rounds of chemo, a stem cell transplant over the period of 18 months) and a US hospital said yes (after a long difficult board meeting of the hospital and in return for $1 million).

I used the British system until 24. We had doctors and dentists in our family. Our own physician came on home visits in those days. Specialists could usually be engaged in a week.

Hospitals: some grim old bulidings. Staffing mainly West India nurses and East Indians doctors with a solid British core : recall Matron.

For the well heeled: Harley Streeet and private hospitals.

Our doctor was a great guy: one Sunday he came three times to check my Dad and eventualy sent him off to the local hospital. Sunday drink at the local Pub and home for Roast Beef and Yorkshire Pudding was an institution in those days. We knew our doc was a great guy when he sacrificed that for us.

The Labour Party under Blair did a lot to improve on the benign neglect of Thatcher. Shades of our Republicans. Things are much better. haven't found anyone bankrupted by the system.

The Brits usually plod along: no flash , no dash. Their health care system is okay.

"…you are unlikely to hear the White House complaining about it's absence."

Maybe so, but you're going to hear your friendly neighborhood Grammar Nazi complain about your erroneous use of the contraction for "it is" in place of the possessive pronoun "its."

It's important to keep the apostrophe in its proper place.

FlownOver, you don't find it slightly childish to compare people who care about the English language to Nazis? Possibly offensive even? What next? The language death panel? Will your grandparents and child be forced to stand before some faceless government bureaucrat, who will decide whether they live or die based on their use of the subjunctive? How far would you like to take your inner Palin down this road?

If I join up, does that mean I get to taser Mark Steyn?
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http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=Y2M3YTI3Y2ZkOGNmYzhlN2FmYWZlYmY3MjNiNmE4NDk=

This story keeps changing, & the White House sources have become disturbingly anonymous -- disturbing because (a) if they're really telling the truth, why all the secrecy? & (b) why is the press letting these guys/gals hide behind anonymity -- it seems reporters all over Washington all know who the three White House sources are -- so why can't the public know who's saying what?

The bottom line though is that both the industry lobbyist Billy Tauzin & the White House spokesman Jim Massina said they had an $80 billion deal. Now, I'm not saying a Republican-turned-Democrat, Louisiana politician-turned-lobbyist is a font of truth, but the White House's backing him up makes clear there WAS a deal; the pushback is that "nobody in the room mentioned it," which a little parsing reveals as a Bill Clinton-type non-denial.

With backroom deals & anonymous sourcing & cleverly-worded denials, the promised "transparency" policy is a not-so-funny joke.

The Constant Weader at http://www.RealityChex.com

The histrionics from some of the commenters are quite amusing. Obama is first and foremost a pragmatist, a left leaning pragmatist, but nonetheless a pragmatist. He intends to preside over the passing of a historic health care reform bill and his focus remains solely on that goal. If a deal with the pharmaceutical industry will help insure that passage, then that is acceptable in the short term. Modifications may be made after the bill has passed. I frankly don't give a damn that a deal was reached. All I care about is a health care reform bill, which provides coverage for all or nearly all U.S. citizens. I will begin to quibble over the details only after that goal has been attained.

"With backroom deals & anonymous sourcing & cleverly-worded denials, the promised "transparency" policy is a not-so-funny joke."
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No it's not. That's the whole f@cking point. The system is corrupt to its core and corporate interests and their "conservative" lackeys will do anything; lie, steal, spy, kill, anything, to protect their profits, pay and perks. And with all this foul, backroom dealing, which eliminated Big Pharma, the AMA, etc. from the disloyal opposition and that hasn't actually given away anything yet, Obama and the Democrats still have only a fair chance of passing any useful reform. How anyone can conclude that Obama is failing his duty to the public by not taking an approach that creates more ruthless, powerful enemies to reform is beyond me.

Yesterday, I wrote about the striking contradiction between Barack Obama's public statements about the need to negotiate Medicare drug prices, and the New York Times report that Obama had agreed to forego such negotiations in order to win drug industry support for health care reform. I called the contradiction a flip flop.
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Translation: I didn't bother to actually investigate the situation, I just wanted to cook up another GOP narrative about flipflops, because, as a patriotic denizen of GOPISTAN INC I feel no obligation to tell those American losers the truth. Thus, I chose to pursue the tired and predictable line that will result in my working for the Heritage Foundation in future.
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Sam Stein, over at the Huffington Post, did some fine work yesterday trying to get to the bottom of how this all happened, finding that the White House surrender on the drug price issue appears to have involved a lot of winks and nods and confusing misdirection. In short, the deal over drug prices may have been cut with the Senate Finance Committee, with some sort of apparent blessing by the White House, not by the White House itself.
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Translation: that meddling little SOB Stein actually committed journalism on my patch, and so I have to try and walk back the piece of garbage I concocted yesterday. Don't ask me to actually admit that I was wrong, or that I didn't do the real work in the first place. But, if you insist on analyzing what I have just said, yes, I, Michael Scherer, peddled nonsense and have no intention of apologizing for it. After all, who cares if the losers outside the Beltway don't have health insurance, or get screwed by their providers. I have Beltway clearance, and that puts me above your prole-like existence. I can lie about the President and call him a flip-flopper, because I have no ethical obligation to him or to you, losers!

juniusr....permisssion to pinch GOPISTAN INC, please..

If th' dealin' an' th' pragmatism be resultin' in a law tha' be doin' 'nothin' bu' funnelin' more money t' private insurance an' pharmaceutical corporations, an' doctors, an hospitals, an' other powerful interests, wha' be th' point o' th' thing in th' end?
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Tha' we just have somethin' CALLED health care reform?
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I be sorry mates, bu' if ye need t' be burnin' down th' barn t' get th' arsonists t' cooperate, ye've still got no barn when ye be finished.
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Th' change o' focus fr'm gettin' somethin' substantive passed t' just gettin' somethin' passed be a huge breach o' th' faith tha' I'll no soon be fervigin' 'r fergettin'!
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YARR!

I don't care how much money private insurance and/or pharmaceutical companies have funneled in their direction PW. For me the issue is not what they should or should not make, rather the issue is all of the people presently uninsured who will be better off with some workable type of insurance. I have represented a few and I know a bunch more and their lives would be immeasurably improved by a viable insurance. This is not just an academic exercise!!!