"The White House's Deal With Big Pharma Undermines Democracy"

Robert Reich says the administration's promise not to use the government's purchasing power to lower the price of drugs in return for a large, pharmaceutical industry sponsored ad campaign in support of health care reform undercuts and threatens the democratic process:

How the White House's Deal With Big Pharma Undermines Democracy, by Robert Reich: I'm a strong supporter of universal health insurance, and a fan of the Obama administration. But I'm appalled by the deal the White House has made with the pharmaceutical industry's lobbying arm to buy their support.

Last week,... the White House confirmed it has promised Big Pharma that any healthcare legislation will bar the government from using its huge purchasing power to negotiate lower drug prices. That's basically the same deal George W. Bush struck in getting the Medicare drug benefit, and it's proven a bonanza for the drug industry. ... Let me remind you: Any bonanza for the drug industry means higher health-care costs for the rest of us...

In return, Big Pharma isn't just supporting universal health care. It's also spending a lots of money on TV and radio advertising... Big Pharma has budgeted $150 million for TV ads promoting universal health insurance, starting this August (that's more money than John McCain spent on TV advertising in last year's presidential campaign), after having already spent a bundle through advocacy groups like Healthy Economies Now and Families USA.

I want universal health insurance. And having had a front-row seat in 1994 when Big Pharma and the rest of the health-industry complex went to battle against it, I can tell you first hand how big and effective the onslaught can be. So I appreciate Big Pharma's support this time around...

But I also care about democracy, and the deal between Big Pharma and the White House frankly worries me. It's bad enough when industry lobbyists extract concessions from members of Congress, which happens all the time. But... [a]n industry is using its capacity to threaten or prevent legislation as a means of altering that legislation for its own benefit ... at the highest reaches of our government, in the office of the President.

When the industry support comes with an industry-sponsored ad campaign in favor of that legislation, the threat to democracy is even greater. Citizens end up paying for advertisements designed to persuade them that the legislation is in their interest. In this case, those payments come in the form of drug prices that will be higher than otherwise...

I don't want to be puritanical about all this. Politics is a rough game... Perhaps the White House deal with Big Pharma is a necessary step to get anything resembling universal health insurance. But if that's the case, our democracy is in terrible shape. How soon until big industries ... have become so politically powerful that secret White House-industry deals ... are prerequisites to any important legislation? When will it become standard practice that such deals come with hundreds of millions of dollars of industry-sponsored TV advertising designed to persuade the public...? (Any Democrats and progressives ... should ask themselves how they'll feel when a Republican White House cuts such deals to advance its own legislative priorities.)

We're on a precarious road -- and wherever it leads, it's not toward democracy.