First Post In His New Home

| No Comments | No TrackBacks
Froomkin's first post from Huffington. And, as per usual, he criticizes the President.

The other possibility -- well, I call that one the Obama-as-pushover scenario. In this one, Obama will come out of it having given away the store -- having neither significantly improved the health-care system nor lowered its costs, but rather having created a new entitlement that primarily benefits the health insurance, pharmaceutical and hospital industries.

So far, the glimpses we've seen from behind all those closed doors suggest the latter scenario. Most significantly, late last week, first the Los Angeles Times and then the New York Times broke the news that Obama had secretly made a sweetheart deal with former arch-nemesis Billy Tauzin, head of Big PhRMA. The same man who during his presidential campaign so ardently pledged to let Medicare negotiate prescription-drug prices with pharmaceutical companies, has now apparently agreed to block any Congressional efforts to do that -- or anything else that would rein in the industry's obscene profits, for that matter -- all in return for $80 billion in promised cost savings over 10 years and, it turns out, an $150 million ad campaign in support of "reform" efforts.

I am not sure I agree with this particular claim. The New York Times noted the White House appeared to backed off the deal. So, well, I guess we will have to wait and see.

No TrackBacks

TrackBack URL: http://www.rooksrant.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/1132

Leave a comment

Control

Politics is the control of wealth and power. You are being conditioned to condemn politics as petty and boring, thus granting all the more control to the powers that be. You are either a part of the problem or a part of the solution. The choice is yours.

Begging

My Amazon.com Wish List

Archives

About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by Rook published on August 10, 2009 12:27 PM.

I Take Issue With The Word 'Saved' was the previous entry in this blog.

Blinded By The Right is the next entry in this blog.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.

The Big Roll