Bleh:
WASHINGTON — Pressed by industry lobbyists, White House officials on Wednesday assured drug makers that the administration stood by a behind-the-scenes deal to block any Congressional effort to extract cost savings from them beyond an agreed-upon $80 billion.
Drug industry lobbyists reacted with alarm this week to a House health care overhaul measure that would allow the government to negotiate drug prices and demand additional rebates from drug manufacturers.
In response, the industry successfully demanded that the White House explicitly acknowledge for the first time that it had committed to protect drug makers from bearing further costs in the overhaul. The Obama administration had never spelled out the details of the agreement.
If you're serious about cutting costs, there's no way you can ban negotiating on price. At some point -- perhaps this year, perhaps in the future -- this absurd restriction is going to be lifted, and people are going to look back and scratch their heads in wonder at the fact that for years we actually banned Medicare from negotiating with drug companies.