Unaffordable drug prices, and what's with these congressmen anyway?

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dragonslayer:
With congressmen like these, no wonder we have sky high unaffordable drug prices:

"Cory Booker And A Bunch Of Democrats Prove Trump Right On Big Pharma"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/democrats-rush-to-prove-trump-right-on-big-pharma_us_5877edd4e4b0b3c7a7b05c29?section=politics

FutureThinker:
Hey dragonslayer! Hope you are doing well this year.

Thanks for this post. I knew the Senate was up till "all hours of the morning" voting in their "vote-a-rama" but I hadn't heard specifics, other than to start repeal of the ACA. I just looked up this amendment and its 37 pages long, so will take some time to peruse. One of my senators did not vote (possibly due to her pacemaker surgery), and the other voted for it, both Democrats, so I'm going to have to take a longer look at it to see just what it said.

This is what we Americans really need to start doing: actually READ these documents to see what they cover, in order to understand their effect. Very time-consuming, but important!! Thanks, FT

dragonslayer:
Whenever I hear about the Huffington Post going against Dems, I sit up and take notice!

lporterrn:
Hi Paul,
When I read the HuffPost piece, I was also disturbed. I looked up the other Dems that voted against it and two were Patty Murry from D.C. and Maria Cantwell from the left Washington, who are very left-leaning Congresswomen. So, I looked into it more, and this may be one of those situations where there is much more than meets the eye. I won't even begin to guess why this happened, but I read this:

--- Quote ---This was done as part of the protest to repealing Obamacare. This amendment was an amendment to the "budget blueprint", which is a symbolic vote that "provides guidance" to Congress when they actually get to voting on the real budget and a lot of Democrats shot down absolutely everything just to protest the fact that this budget will be used to kill Obamacare. You might notice that every single amendment to this bill was voted down. This never would have gone to the president, so it never would have became law.
The fact is that Democrats proposed it to get some Republicans on record as opposing lower drug prices, as lower drug prices is a benefit of Obamacare, and then Democrats killed it to keep it from becoming part of the budget blueprint and distracting from Obamacare and Planned Parenthood, and that's just how these things go.
--- End quote ---

There are also a few well-written editorials on the web about this which help me understand why Booker voted this way.
As for whether there were other influences, who knows. Time and solid investigational journalism will tell.

dragonslayer:
This is one of the problems we have in trying to ascertain the real meaning of such a vote.. Lack of transparency loaded with purposeful obfuscation in an effort to hide from the public what is really going on presents an all too common problem.

On its face, it looks like the monied efforts by Big Pharma/loggyists are influencing key congressmen to vote against any efforts by the government to rein in prices.

"There was a strong correlation between states where the drug industry is concentrated ― such as New Jersey, Washington, Pennsylvania and Delaware ― and Democratic opposition to Wednesday’s vote. A cynic might conclude that industry influence had something to do with the outcome."

Yet there are a host of other reasons which might explain the reasons for such a seemingly perplexing vote.

But in the end, the fact is that democratic congressmen voted against a bill which would have had the effect of lowering drug prices for whatever reason. As for reasons and rationale, Ill just claim that determination is above my pay grade!

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