“Pretty sad when it is news that someone who is a rightful failure is fired from his job.”
It depends on whether you think Obamacare would have been good news or bad news for pharma. For all we know, Tauzin knowingly took a bullet for the cause. He might well have reasoned that absent a deal, Obama would have vilified pharma and whipped up populist support for the bill on grounds that big greedy drugmakers were against the bill, hence it must be good for the public. He likewise could have reasoned that had pharma run significant ads FAVORING the bill, this might have turned the suspicious public against the bill for similar reasons. Finally, he might also have figured that once the public learned of this back-room deal, this too would have stimulated further outrage and opposition. And to all appearances, the latter actual did occur: it was not wishful thinking.
In short, cutting a deal may have been motivated by a desire to STOP the bill rather than secure its enactment. Billy Tauzin is an extremely shrewd politician. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if the reasoning I’ve speculated about above closely corresponds to the logic underlying his actual behavior.
Billy is a whore is got $2 million a year to screw us. The fact that he was a bad f__k for the industry doesn’t make him a good whore for us.