PhRMA opens their war chest to oppose health care reform
Posted on November 14th, 2008 by Jason Rosenbaum in Profits Before People
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Sean Lengell at the Washington Times gets to the heart of the issue:
The nation's largest pharmaceutical lobbying group is preparing a multimillion-dollar public relations campaign to tout the importance of free-market health care and undercut an expected push by the Obama administration for price controls of prescription drugs.
The effort, which will include a national television commercial scheduled to begin airing next week, is the first salvo in what likely will be a huge battle over health care reform during the Obama presidency.
Other major industries are also gearing up for the fight, including big businesses and insurance companies. But the stakes are especially high for drugmakers, which stand to lose as much as $30 billion in revenue if President-elect Barack Obama's plan to let the federal government negotiate Medicare drug prices is implemented, according to one independent report.
As with most things, this is about money. Though PhRMA's ads will tout the benefits of a "free market" health care reform, I'm glad reporting on the issue is getting to the real reasons behind these ads.
For the record, free market health care reform is something of a myth. John McCain ran on one of the most aggressive free market health care reform plans we've seen in recent years, and he was soundly defeated. And there's reason to believe the rules of the free market don't really even apply to health care, especially health insurance. Most people don't behave rationally when it comes to health care; they don't plan ahead for the care they are going to need, they have to be dragged into preventative medicine, and when crisis strikes, they understandably don't spend a lot of time shopping around for the best deal.
All PhRMA is doing here is putting their profits before the American people, and hiding it behind the old conservative canard called the free market. One might hope they'd realize that quality, affordable health care for all is a worthy goal worth supporting, even if their bottom line takes a hit, but somehow I think it's unlikely.
As such, expect a lot more from PhRMA, our friends at AHIP (who's been strangely silent lately), and a whole host of other industry front groups who stand to lose if health care reform passes.
'Consumerism' requires two things: price and quality. Neither of these exist in our healthcare system.
Co-pays and co-insurance payments can not be determined when network reimbursement rates are not disclosed to their insureds.
I tried picking a facility and a doctor to perform a minor outpatient surgery. It took the hospital and the doctor weeks to provide me the procedure codes and full rates. It took another few weeks for my carrier to tell me that they were not allowed to disclose the reimbursement rate (amount paid to the hospital) of which I had to pay 15%.
Two providers can charge exactly the same but have different contracted rates -making it impossible for an insured to make a 'consumer' decision.
Don't even get me started on the lack of quality score information available to patients…..