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Influence Peddling and Government Corruption by Ben Taylor
Anyone watching the CBS News program,"60
Minutes" had to be thoroughly disgusted, but should not have
been surprised, by the corruption depicted in the hallowed halls
of Congress. The passing of the "Big Pharmaceutical Windfall
Profits Act", -woops, a slip of the keyboard, actually the
grossly mislabeled "Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement,
and Modernization Act" of 2003 shows us the criminal influence
that Pharmaceutical companies have with supposed "public
servants"/law makers.
Who even remembers or knows any details
about this bill? One reason is our esteemed public servants deliberately
kept it and its unsavory details under the public radar except
for how great it would be for Americans in need. Congress passed
this bill in the dead of night, at 3 A.M. after intense influence
peddling and "strong arm" tactics/twisting the arms
of those not already supporting this major criminal act. Even
then President Bush could have stood up for the American taxpayer
and vetoed it, but he instead played the political angle and signed
it. At least I hope he did it for that reason and not for monetary
enrichment reasons. On that thought, it might be interesting to
see how many politicians have stock in their portfolio that
would be benefited.
The CBS News report stated "The unorthodox roll call on one
of the most expensive bills ever placed before the House of Representatives
began in the middle of the night, long after most people in Washington
[and America] had switched off C-SPAN and gone to sleep."
The only witnesses were congressional staffers, hundreds of lobbyists,
and U.S. Representatives like Dan Burton, R-Ind., and Walter Jones,
R-N.C. "The pharmaceutical lobbyists wrote the bill,"
says Jones. "The bill was over 1,000 pages. And it got to
the members of the House that morning, and we voted for it at
about 3 a.m. in the morning." Is anyone living in fantasy
land and believing that any of our Congressman actually read the
provisions of this act?
It's obvious why the vote finally took place at 3 a.m. In the
words of Dan Burton, "I think a lot of the shenanigans that
were going on that night, they didn't want on national television
in primetime," Congressman Jones said, "I've been in
politics for 22 years, and it was the ugliest night I have ever
seen in 22 years."
The most disgusting and troubling
example of the criminal influence of the pharmaceutical lobby
was the provision that prohibited medicare from negotiating better
prices for volume purchasing, ... and who buys in larger volume
that the federal government? Even the Veteran's Administration
negotiates substantial savings for the American taxpayer because
of their volume purchasing power. As a basic Economics 101, this
is one reason (notwithstanding Chinese slave labor being another
prime reason) large retailers such as Wal-Mart are able to offer
products at much lower
shelf prices to the public. You get a better price for buying
1000 bottles of our products than you would for buying one.
The influence peddling and the sale of votes to the drug lobby
was as brazen and flagrant as any corrupt politician or pettifoggering
attorney could ever exhibit. No less than seven Senators and congressmen
obtained lucrative positions and regis-tered as lobbyists for
Pharmaceutical companies shortly after this bill was steam-rolled
through Congress.
CBS News reported that, "the
drug lobby was so interested in this bill that they had over 1000
lobbyists working on it. Ron Pollack the executive director of
Families USA, a nonpartisan health care watchdog group, says it
all boiled down to a key provision in the legislation. It prohibited
Medicare and the federal government from using its vast purchasing
power to negotiate lower prices directly from the drug companies.
"The key goal was to make sure
there'd be no interference in the drug companies' abilities to
charge high prices and to continue to increase those prices,"
says Pollack. Pollack says there's no question that this was prompted
by the pharmaceutical lobby. "They were the ones who wanted
to make sure Medicare could charge high prices and to continue
to increase those prices," he said. The drug industry says
that competition among private insurance plans that service the
Medicare pro-gram help keep prices low. But Families USA reported
in a January study that Medicare patients are being charged nearly
60 percent more for the top 20 drugs than veterans pay under a
program run by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs."
Are you sick at your stomach yet?
I certainly am. It is not only time for a complete overhaul of
the way lobbyists are permitted access to our government officials,
but it is time for a comprehensive investigation starting with
how this Act was passed. RICO and influencing peddling charges
should be filed with swift and fair trials followed by immediate
public floggings and hangings.
If we don't get these gangsters
out of our government, we will not have a country left in a very
short time, ...and it may already be too late. A few good men
like Congressman Dan Burton of Indiana and Walter Jones of North
Carolina are simply not enough to stem the tide of graft and corruption
that is gnawing like a cancer on the soul of our Republic.
