John Tierney: “While PhRMA was busy trying to contact the chairman's office to make an offer of some millions of dollars a year to work…”

“While PhRMA was busy trying to contact the chairman's office to make an offer of some millions of dollars a year to work for them, the American people were having the deal cut out from underneath them. When we talk to seniors and say, look, if this is a good bill, when do you think it would start? Their answer is, immediately. This bill does not start until 2006, well after the next election. We know what that is all about. Negotiations for lower prices? Common sense. Why do people think the pharmaceutical companies have resisted prescription drugs in Medicare all this time? Because they thought for sure the next common-sense thing would be for that large group of 37 million people to be used as bargaining leverage to get a fairer price, as the free market would dictate and is done elsewhere. But with this majority in the House, the Republican majority in the House, the Republican majority in the Senate, and a Republican in the White House they can have it all. They can have all these new customers and clients and not have to worry about it because they got them to put in the bill that there would be no negotiation for a lower price. People can see right through that. They see through the gap, the fact that there is going to be a period of time when they are paying premiums and getting nothing in return, the so-called gap or doughnut hole.”