Sinema Sells out to Big Pharma as Retirees are Abandoned to Pay High Prescription Prices

This past week Senator Sinema threatened to derail President Biden’s legislative agenda for lowering prescription drug prices meanwhile taking more than $750,000 in donations from the pharmaceutical and medical device industries.

According to an analysis by Kaiser Health News, Sinema ranks as one of Congress’s leading recipients of pharmaceutical industry donations despite her successful 2018 Senate campaign where Sinema repeatedly vowed to lower prescription drug prices and drug costs for seniors.

According to Open Secrets, she received an additional $519,988 from PACs and individuals in the pharmaceutical industry throughout her political career.

Billy Tauzin’s lasting damage

Ever since Medicare Part A went into law on December 8, 2003, in the George W. Bush administration, Part D (prescription drugs) has been mired in controversy because Medicare cannot negotiate drug prices with Big Pharma. All this came about because of one US Representative named Billy Tauzin (R-LA), who was chair of the US House Committee on Energy and Commerce, which oversees the drug industry.

• Tauzin inserted a clause into the bill prohibiting the government from negotiating lower drug prices and banning the importation of identical, cheaper drugs from Canada and elsewhere. In contrast, the Veterans Affairs agency, which can negotiate drug prices, pays much less than Medicare. All this was done in an unusual congressional session at 3 a.m. under heavy pressure from the drug companies. After voting for the bill, other Congressmen claimed that they didn’t know that part of the bill was inserted.
• The day after his term in Congress ended in January 2005, Tauzin began work as the head of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, or PhRMA, a powerful trade group for pharmaceutical companies. Tauzin was hired at a salary that outsiders estimated at $2 million a year.
• As head of PhRMA, Tauzin was also a key player in 2009 health care reform negotiations that produced pharmaceutical industry support to pass President Obama’s Affordable Care Act. Tauzin received $11.6 million from PhRMA in 2010, making him the highest-paid health-law lobbyist. At the end of that year, Tauzin retired from the association.
• Unfortunately, President Obama campaigned on the promise to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices. But, by accepting the help of big PhRMA in passing the Affordable Care Act, he agreed to keep the no-negotiating clause.
• Not to be outdone, President Trump proposed a $200 drug card to seniors to help them pay for their prescription drugs (after promising like President Obama to eliminate the no-negotiating clause). Trump claimed, “Under my plan, 33 million Medicare beneficiaries will soon receive a card in the mail containing $200 that they can use to help pay for prescription drugs.” Trump told a crowd in Charlotte, NC, “nobody has seen this before. These cards are incredible.” But the devil is always in the details when the department of Health and Human Services said, “as with all one-time gifts, once the patient pockets the money, the benefits they still have to pay high drug prices.” In its view, the $6.6 billion would be better spent addressing underlying problems in the pharmaceutical industry.

Good Old Boy Billy Tauzin was not content to ride off into the sunset with his $11.6 million from PhRMA. He announced in September 2015 he turned against his old allies. Then, in July, he quietly announced he had become co-chair of a new lobby group squaring off with the pharmaceutical industry, called the Medicine Access and Compliance Coalition (MACC). It’s a collection of health care providers advocating for lower drug prices through what’s known as the 340B program,  a drug price control program.

The 340B program, established in 1992, is intended to give a financial boost to hospitals and clinics that serve poor populations by requiring drug companies to sell them discounted drugs that are then provided to indigent patients but can also be sold at a markup privately insured patients. However, medications purchased at 340B prices can be dispensed to insured patients, and purchasers may bill those insurers, including Medicare, at higher rates. In other words, the hospital can dispense drugs at a discount to the poor and underinsured, but hospitals are not required to pass along the discount for Medicare patients.

So when it comes to prescription drugs, Americans should bear the full cost of the development of new drugs by pharmaceutical companies plus generics so that the rest of the world can pay far less. It’s no wonder our elected representatives are so against Medicare negotiating for lower drug prices. Lower drug prices mean no campaign money from PhRMA.