Health Care

The Drug Industry Threatens To Oppose The Health Bill

By Karen Tumulty | January 15, 2010 | +

The Associated Press reports that in the wake of President Obama’s decision to push for a shorter period of exclusivity for biologics, the drug lobby is threatening to walk away from its deal to support the bill:

The drug industry is threatening to end its support for President Barack Obama’s health overhaul effort because of a rift over protecting brand-name biotech drugs from low-cost generic competitors.

The Associated Press has obtained an e-mail to board members of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America from the trade group’s president saying “we could not support the bill” if the industry gets less than 12 years of competitive protection for the expensive products.

The pharmaceutical industry has been a major supporter of Obama’s health effort. It has spent many tens of millions of dollars on advertising and lobbying.

Obama, along with generic producers and consumer groups, want a shorter period of protection.

UPDATE: This is the text of the email that PhRMA head Billy Tauzin sent to his board earlier today:

Mr. Waxman is pushing hard, with the support of the President, to drop our 12-year FOB period down. We are all letting everyone we know hear that we could not support the bill if this happens. Please activate immediately all of your contacts.

Billy

UPDATE2: BIO’s Jim Greenwood weighs in.

Related Topics: biologics, drug industry, generic biologics, Barack Obama, Health Care

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  • apollyon07

    The drug industry pulling their support? OH NO, ANYTHING BUT THAT!!! hahaha

  • jcapan

    Oh my, the oligarchs are PO-ed! Get out the smelling salts. The day their stocks are plummeting is the day the process/bill is on the right track. Obama’s move (the equivalent of Cheney asking big energy to come in & draft admin. policy) was not only foolhardy and politically toxic (outside of Rahm’s world) but now it may have been all for naught? Priceless

  • apollyon07

    The cartel is angered, jcapan! Quick, let’s give them some goodies to calm them down.
    .
    And by goodies, I mean inserting ridiculous pro-business changes to the bill.

  • newfreedomblog

    “Health Care Reform” as proposed by Obama, Pelosi and Reid is now officially DEAD.
    .
    (But, vote Massachusetts for Scott Brown, just in case)

  • stuartzechman

    KT:
    .
    Are they really angry? Really?
    .
    Oh my good Lord…These are the people who know all about how our complex system of health care pricing works! They’re the people responsible for the normal flow of prescription drugs through our economy! What are we going to do? They can’t be unhappy…or the whole system might collapse! Oh God!
    .
    Can’t we just, you know, bail them out or something?
    .
    What are their prospective losses? $500 billion? $700 billion? Will they take cash? Do they need to write a law for us to pass? Is that enough?
    .
    Is that OK? Oh jeez…
    .
    Do you think they’ll be OK with that?

  • yoshiattack

    Because the corporate interests are ticked, the bill is now acceptable? Nah.

  • stuartzechman

    Remember, this is only one of many items negotiated for and obtained.
    .
    They’re pissed because they may not get everything, and the Administration will attempt to portray this as substantial resistance to industry interests.
    .
    Of course, it isn’t. They’re just not getting everything they’re demanding.

  • 53_3

    I’ll wait till after this whole thing is done.
    .
    Who knows what the final product will be…

  • jcapan

    Yes, SZ, painfully clear. As Digby said yesterday: “It’s indisputably true that the political system is run by wealthy plutocrats and much of what passes for democracy is kabuki.”

    BTW, OT, I did sort of respond to you late last night your time (by respond I mean posting others’ content/links). See here

  • stuartzechman

    Oregon JC:
    .
    Rather than hijack the thread, let me just say thanks for looking that up, although the Primitivists are antediluvian mystics, self-alienated from a proper understanding of Debord or Situationists (not “Situationism”, obviously).

    Shepard postulated that many humans in post-agricultural society are often not fully mature, but are trapped in infantilism or an adolescent state…

    Hmmm…I think that, if he’d been around in Classical times, the Romans would have crucified him for that postulation without a second thought.
    .
    He also might have ended up in Torquemada’s strappado, had he been alive to make these conjectures in the fifteenth century.
    .
    It is certainly possible that, if he had lived in mid-twentieth century Europe, because of these thoughts he might have become one of the many hundreds of thousands of victims of Zyklon B.
    .
    “infantilism”? “post-agricultural”? Hmm…The Tatar hordes do come immediately to mind…The various Incan genocides…Hiroshima/Nagasaki…
    .
    OK, I’ve hijacked the thread. Sorry, folks, back to the business at hand.
    .
    I seriously appreciate the response, Oregon JC.

  • shepherdwong

    Me, I’m waiting for Joe Klein’s column lambasting the idiocy of Big Pharma for opposing “landmark social legislation that guarantees and subsidizes health care coverage for 30 million Americans who don’t have it now.”

  • stuartzechman

    LOL

  • jcapan

    SZ, was not claiming the primitivists have a proper interp. of Debord’s theories. Just intrigued by the two degrees of separation from my current read. They are, however, equally hostile to modernity. I think those adovcating rewilding or going feral are a bit loopy, but there are worse reactions to the machine. One I can name is advanced capitalism.
    .
    And please don’t reject Shepard out of hand. He’s well worth reading.

  • destor23

    If they’re going to oppose it anyway we might as well add drug reimportation.

  • newfreedomblog

    Oh hell, why stop there? Why not import the entire Chinese system of government and economic neo-Socialism?
    .
    You can then get a job in a factory making toys painted with a high level of lead to sell in the new People’s Walmart Warehouse Store of America!!

  • newfreedomblog

    Post script:
    .
    Chairman Mao, oh darn, Chairman Barack thanks you for your consideration.

  • stuartzechman

    I’m sorry to be flip. I will look this person up, thanks for telling me about this theory.

  • carotexas1

    I am trying to do the same thing 53.

  • redraven937

    Oh hell, why stop there? Why not import the entire Chinese system of government and economic neo-Socialism?

    Lowering the cost of prescription drugs via application of capitalistic ideals of open markets and competitive advantage is the equivalent of importing the Chinese system of government and economic neo-Socialism (whatever that means)?
    .
    Does this stuff make sense in your head before you post it, or can you simply not be bothered to think about it in your haste to create garbage?

  • 53_3

    Seems to me that you two had your shot between 2000 and 2008.
    .
    It also seems to me, as I remember, to have resulted in a rise in premiums of say, how much, percentage wise over those years?
    .
    Let’s not mention one each economic collapse that occurred at the end of his second term – that was whith deregulatory efforts in full swing.
    .
    Better rhetoric, please…

  • http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2010/01/18/biologics-obama/ Wonk Room » Health Reform May Prevent Cheaper ‘Wonder Drugs’ From Reaching Consumers

    [...] Billy Touzin wrote in an email to his board. “We are all letting everyone we know hear that we could not support the bill if this happens. Please activate immediately all of your [...]

  • http://www.amazon.com/Lost-Arts-War-1/dp/1453746838/ The Lost Arts Of War

    The Lost Arts Of War…

    …an interestin post over at . . ….

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