One of the unfortunate side effects of our political process is that, in the end, the lobbyists win.

The Wall Street Journal Health Blog notes that:

The New York Times reports that the pharmaceutical industry was assured by the administration that it wouldn’t have to bear any more of the costs of health reform beyond the $80 billion over 10 years that it previously agreed to. That pledge appears to be at odds with allowing Medicare to negotiate prices on prescription drugs — a provision included in a bill that recently cleared a House committee.

Billy Tauzin, president of the drug industry trade group, told the NYT, “We were assured: ‘We need somebody to come in first. If you come in first, you will have a rock-solid deal,’ Who is ever going to go into a deal with the White House again if they don’t keep their word? You are just going to duke it out instead.”

This is precisely the reason that government bungles these things. While the private insurance industry may anger us with their comparative effectiveness studies that makes choosing the right drugs for treatment harder, the government’s studies are bound to be heavily influenced by drug company and other interest group lobbyists.

The onus should be on the advocates of increasing government influence in health care to provide examples of government health programs that actually work better than their private industry counterparts. They are not saying “Look how good we’ve done with Medicare”, “take for example the Native American Health care policies” or “just consider the Veteran’s Administration policies.” Americans who take a more than cursory look at those examples will understand that local is better than national.

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