The pharmaceutical industry wants Americans to continue paying far more for medicines than people in any other country, to protect their tremendous profits. And one of Joe Biden’s top campaign consulting firms is helping them.
by Andrew Perez
Part 1
President Joe Biden’s top media buying firm is helping Big Pharma’s efforts to kill his party’s watered-down drug pricing legislation and targeting Senate Democrats up for reelection this year. It’s the latest reminder that for the Beltway consultant class, money is far more important than ideology.
While Big Pharma’s allies in Congress have already succeeded in scaling back the Democrats’ drug pricing plan, the provision in Biden’s Build Back Better legislation still represents the party’s most sincere effort to fulfill its longtime promise to allow Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices. The idea of allowing the government to negotiate drug prices — like most other high-income countries do — is one of the most popular items in the Biden social agenda bill.
While Big Pharma’s allies in Congress have already succeeded in scaling back the Democrats’ drug pricing plan, the provision in Biden’s Build Back Better legislation still represents the party’s most sincere effort to fulfill its longtime promise to allow Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices. The idea of allowing the government to negotiate drug prices — like most other high-income countries do — is one of the most popular items in the Biden social agenda bill.
Yet, a top Democratic Party media buying firm, Canal Partners Media, is placing ads for drug industry front groups that want to block Democrats from lowering drug prices as promised in the Biden reconciliation bill. One group argues that Democrats are putting rare disease patients at risk, and is targeting several incumbent Democratic senators by name. The other says Democrats are harming drug companies’ ability to respond to pandemics like COVID-19.
These fearmongering ad campaigns conveniently ignore the fact that the federal government regularly subsidizes drug companies’ research and development costs and has spent tens of billions of dollars to fund COVID vaccines and treatments.
These fearmongering ad campaigns conveniently ignore the fact that the federal government regularly subsidizes drug companies’ research and development costs and has spent tens of billions of dollars to fund COVID vaccines and treatments.
While one of the group’s ads says they aren’t worried about corporate profits, that is exactly what these campaigns are about. The pharmaceutical industry wants to ensure that Americans continue to pay far more for medicines than people in any other country, in order to protect companies’ tremendous profits. And Democratic campaign consultants are helping them.
Canal Partners Media did not respond to the Daily Poster’s request for comment.
Canal Partners Media did not respond to the Daily Poster’s request for comment.
Source, links:
Comments
Post a Comment