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Posted on 02/13/2012 6:04:33 AM PST by PizzaTheHut
With Contraceptive Mandate, who's really in bed with "Big Pharma" now?
I noticed that there are some severe drug shortages here lately too especially for life sustaining chemotherapy medicines. There’s more than one way to ration healthcare apparently.
It won't matter, because they are free.</sarcasm>
Big Pharma was one of Obama’s biggest backers in 2008 weren’t they?
Exactly. As was Big Wall Street.
Both parties are two sides of the same coin.
For some reason, the general public believes only The Republican Party is slimy.
It's the world's longest running and most successful Jedi mind trick.
Mark my word, the pharmecuticals are licking their chops with the Birth Control Mandate. In the end, insurance companies will have to raise premiums no matter what the future prices of these products.
It’s absolutely crazy. I see this coming. Obama and the Dems put a mandate in place. This will cause insurance premiums to rise. When people get upset about higher premiums, Obama and the Democrats will point the finger at the evil insurance companies ripping people off. It’s absolutely maddening! Arrrrrggh!!!!! Okay, I feel better now.
I think there are zillions of birth control pills that are now generics, so “Big Pharma” isn’t making any money off them at all.
Nice try, though.
“when the Democrats would screech to high heaven about the GOP being in cahoots with Big Pharma”
Well it seems that Rick Santorum is still in cahoots with Big Pharma, just like he’d been as Senator 200-2006...
A child asked Santorum what the candidate would do to lower the cost of medicine.
February 1, 2012, the candidate Santorum declared: “”People have no problem going out and buying an iPad for $900. But paying $200 for a drug they have a problem with — that keeps you alive. Why? Because you’ve been conditioned in thinking health care is something you should get and not have to pay for. Drug companies, health care companies need to have a profitability, because if they don’t, then how are we going to regulate costs?”
The mother of the child yelled out that she was going bankrupt just to pay for her child to keep breathing.
“I hear these and sympathize with these very passionate cases,” Santorum responded to the mother. “Look, I want your son and everybody to have the opportunity to stay alive on much-needed drugs. But the bottom line is, we have companies with the incentive to make those drugs.” (meaning making more money and getting the medication more expensive)
In the years before he lost his Pennsylvania Senate seat in 2006, Rick Santorum worked hard to win hundreds of millions of dollars in additional Medicare money for hospitals in Puerto Rico.
He sponsored at least two Senate bills and pushed to amend a mammoth Medicare overhaul to include the extra spending, which would have benefited Universal Health Services, a Pennsylvania-based hospital management company with facilities in Puerto Rico. If it seems at odds with the small-government philosophy Mr. Santorum now espouses in his presidential campaign, it was in line with his legislative efforts to help businesses in his state.
Within months of leaving the Senate (in 2006), Mr. Santorum joined the board of Universal Health Services, where he collected $395,000 in director’s fees and stock options before resigning last year (in 2011).
It’s amazing how much Santorum was willing to help corporations, and how little is he ready to help sick children to survive.
Until the MSM begins to report the facts, the leftist myths will continue
Interesting. So Small Pharma is behind this.
It’s amazing how much Santorum was willing to help corporations, and how little is he ready to help sick children to survive.
DU called. They want this line back.
Or until The MSM ceases to exist.
Which seems more likely.
Planned Parenthood is a big seller of contraceptives too. So they stand to benefit tremendously from this requirement.
In this case, the government. Under Obamacare, the government has pretty much applied Euro price controls on just about anything made by pharmaceutical companies.
Not to mention, birth control pills have been around for decades, and most of the earlier generation pills have long since gone generic.
Marguerite, it is very hard to find factual stuff you can be sure of, and I am glad you posted this. This thing about Puerto Rico is really bad for Santorum... everyone can understand it... big spending, paybacks... thanks so much!
In regard to your post about Santorumw (the MSNDC article), yadda yadda, with the story of someone unable to afford a drug for a sick child ...
I get it. Prescription drugs are expensive...
How is the birth control mandate going to lower the cost of anything?
BTW - While everyone pays highere premiums to cover the costs of birth control, there won’t be any less unwanted pregnancies, births, as a result of this mandate. I guarantee you that.
I didn’t realize my post attracted a DUer.
It must have been pretty good then since the
the DUer inked a good 5-6 paragraphs with links to msndc and the nyt.
I’m proud of myself now for attracting the DUers to swoop in.
Santorum was correct talking to that mother. He was defending the principle of the free market. The presumption that she had a right to free medications is a liberal invention. Are anti-Rick types are defending liberalism here now? And, IIRC (it was discussed at FR at the time), the drug she cited as necessary for “keeping her son alive” was for ADHD and significantly less expensive than she claimed. Just an all too typical manufactured liberal moment. Do it to Obama and we buy her a ‘free’ house. Do it to Santorum and receive a valuable lecture on the truth, free to the tax payers.
The birth control isn’t even a health issue, but only a way for women who don’t want to get pregnant, after enjoying (or not) lovemaking.
Healthcare insurance SHOULD NOT pay for ANY contraceptive item. Any woman can buy the stuff in a pharmacy, and the pills are not that expensive. A set of contraceptive pills cost between $10 (the price of two Big Mac) and maximum $50$ a month, depending on the brand.
You may be right that the insurance companies have been quiet on this mandate because they might think that it will be a cost saver for them in the end.
My personal feeling on this is that the only outcome of this mandate is higher insurance premiums to cover the costs.
The people who currenly use contraceptive will continue to use them and the people who don’t use them will continue to not use them.
There won’t be any less unwanted pregnancies or births, or lower overall healthcare costs as a result of this mandate.
There are ways to lower the costs of healthcare, but this mandate is not one of them.
I’m afraid you haven’t got it. What Santorum meant was the drug companies should increase the drug prices in order to make more profit in order to ... blah-blah.
That’s NOT free market. Free market means to put different companies in concurrence on the same products, which will LOWER the prices NOT increase them. Giving to some specific companies the control of the market is the reason of soaring costs of the healthcare. It’s the government and FDA fault.
“Healthcare insurance SHOULD NOT pay for ANY contraceptive item”
I agree. The more items that are added to one’s insurance plan, the higher the premium costs for everyone.
Despite the liberal argument, these items are not medically necessary.
Plain and simple, as an another example, if an insurance policy doesn’t cover Durable Medical Equipment, then unfortunately a wheelchair won’t be covered when it’s needed. I understand that folks can be angry when they complain that their insurance won’t pay for a wheelchair, but insurance, like anything else, is you get what you pay for. When your policy doesn’t cover something, that’s less money you’ve been paying all along in premiums.
Obama is trying to drive ins. premiums up and run ins. companies out of business:
http://www.redstate.com/streiff/2012/02/10/obama-administration-doubles-down-on-contraception-rule/
Posted by streiff (Diary)
Friday, February 10th at 2:00PM EST
35 Comments
Following on what my colleague Francis Cianfrocca writes below, the Obama Administration’s ballyhooed “compromise” on the extraordinary rule that gives the US Department of Health and Human Services the final say in how religious groups operate is actually a finger in the eye.
From the White House statement:
Under the new policy announced today, women will have free preventive care that includes contraceptive services no matter where she works.
If a woman works for religious employers with objections to providing contraceptive services as part of its health plan, the religious employer will not be required to provide contraception coverage but her insurance company will be required to offer contraceptive care free of charge.
If we actually believe that in the real world TANSTAAFL is an immutable fact, who, then, is actually paying for the “free of charge” contraception and abortifacient cover. My guess is that the employer whose employees are getting the “free of charge” service is going to see their bill go up.
This is not a trivial issue. This is an attack, one of several staged by this Administration, on religious freedom. One hopes that the Catholic Church and other religious groups see through this charade and continue to oppose the supplanting of conscience by federal regulations.
No, a totalitarian wanna be in the White House and his statist minions in Congress are responsible. Blaming this legislation on "Big Pharma" is nothing more than class warfare BS that should be left to the Marxist in the White House, his statist minions, and other assorted and sundry useful idiots.
What a crock. The drug companies invest hundreds of millions of dollars to bring new therapies to market. Depending on the size of the potential market, they have to charge accordingly to recoup their investment and make a profit. That's how the markets work -- or is how they are supposed to work. Most NME's require at least a dozen years to finally become commercialized. That doesn't leave a lot of time to make back their investment before the patent(s) expire.
Anyone calling for controls over what the drug companies can charge, or what they can earn, is uniquely unqualified to be lecturing anyone about markets. Countries that impose price controls on drugs do not create new drugs. There's a good reason for this. Anyone arguing in favor of government forcing industry to share their intellectual property, for the good of society -- or whatever other BS you can come up with, is an economic illiterate and a collectivist.
Healthcare is expensive because we have a third-party pays system, and because providing the best healthcare in the world is expensive.
Are you AT ALL familiar with Article 1 Section 8 clause 8 of our Constitution?
Do you think it works as designed to promote the useful arts and sciences?
Do you understand why the vast majority of scientific innovation comes from America?
Are you opposed to the intellectual property rights recognized under our Constitution?
I wished I shared you idyllic view of "Big Pharma". Alas, I don't. The pharmaceuticals companies are continually successful in having natural remedies removed from the marketplace such as ephedra because 2 or 3 people died of heart attacks but they put out "pseudoephedrine" which is, as it name implies, fake ephedra which must be bought at the pharmacy and come with a list of side effects that make it sound safer to drink Drano.
I'm not saying the pharmaceutical companies are evil incarnate nor am I saying they are pure as the wind driven snow. But, if you don't think they are in cahoots with RATS and RINOs to keep us dependent on their products, well, let's just leave it at that.
Ephedra was responsible for killing for than a few people. There are many others who will suffer life long health effects because of that "natural" remedy. The product should have been removed from the market much sooner, but because it wasn't considered a pharmaceutical, the product remained available for a long time. The only thing you need to know about Ephedra is how strongly Orrin Hatch defended the drug when the lobbyist were lining his pockets and how quickly he changed course when it was clear that the "remedy" was killing and injuring people. Don't you hate it when big government (led by a RINO like Hatch) protects "natural remedy" manufacturers even when it's clear that their products are dangerous? But you're against that, right?
Why would you use pseudoephedra when it comes with a list of side effects that make eating Drano safer? Did the "natural remedy" company provide a list of potential side effects with their bottles of Ephedra?
The belief that Big Pharma is making you dependent on their products is the worst kind of tin foil. Anyone who thinks that "Big Pharma" is in cahoots with the government, to ensure this alleged dependence, doesn't know much about the relationship between the fedgov and the pharmaceutical industry.
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