This will be a short diary, because the point I wish to make, and indeed draw into the debate on healthcare reform, concerns drug costs and a back-room compromise supposedly made by Obama to the pharmaceutical industry. Namely, Obama is claimed to have agreed to not push for "rebates" to be paid to Medicare for prescription drug purchases made by them
Whatever distortions the corporate media try to throw out there (AP headlined this issue "Squeezing the Drug Companies"), the fact remains:
Medicare pays the highest unit prices of any insurance entity for prescription drugs
despite Medicare being probably 10 times as a large a purchaser of drugs as the next largest insurance company. The drug companies conspired to fleece the taxpqayers, by placing a false high price on their drugs while offering discounts, in the form of rebates, to the private insurance industry. Rebates would represent an illegal overcharging of government, were it not for the hold the drug companies have over Congress, the President and thus the legal system.
Ask your Congressperson a simple question:
Why do drug companies charge Medicare a higher unit price than private insurance?
It's a simple question, but it has no nice answer. The truth is, the fleecing of Medicare by hospitals and by drug companies is "built into the system." It doesn't reflect poorly on Medicare, but on the private healthcare system, which is actually replete with crooks.
Until Obama relents on this issue, I cannot take him seriously as favoring a meaningful reform. The dollars involved here are staggering, and could finance a meaningful part of a true reform package.