House Reps cave to big Pharma.. we'll all pay more
Due to the campaign donations and intense lobbying by the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, a budget rider that would have saved the state millions of medicaid dollars and our own prescriptions, was dropped by the House. The Senate will take up this issue later this month. A former House member Bob Coughling (w Roxbury) now the CEO of the MBC drafted an amendment prohibiting the Health Policy Commission from publishing what it believes are fair drug pricing. It also prohibits the commission from holding public investigatory hearings.
A few other States have drug price disclosure, Vermont, California, New York and Connecticut. It will be up to Karen Spilka to make drug pricing a reality here in Mass.
posted by Jim Pillsbury @ 10:42 AM
9 Comments
9 Comments:
Everyone pick up your phones, your pens, and your keyboards and contact you state senator to demand we do something about this. People are dying not because the have a disease with no treatment options, but because they can not afford the medicine they need to live. If you don't think that is a huge issues then you have your head in the sand.
I wrote to Maria and asked if she was one of the 152 voted for the bill. She and Lewis voted present as there kids are on masshealth, but she did say she wouldn't have voted for it. Thant's encouraging.
Why the hell are the kids of two state reps, both of whom have partners who also work, eligibe for MA Health when me, a retired elder living on a fixed income have to pay for my insurance. This is so unfair.
We think it is unfair for immigrants to try and cross into our country at our southern borders because we don’t want to have to “pay” for them but we think it is ok for our citizens, especially the elderly, to have to cross our northern border into Canada to buy the drugs we can’t afford to pay for here in our own country. So OK for Canada to subsidize our citizens, but we can’t do that for others?
The US was at one time a world leader in all areas. Now we are far behind other countries on so many things it is embarrassing. One of those things is affordable health care for all citizens. Why can’t we do what so many others have been doing for decades? What does that say about us as a country, that we do not take care of our most vulnerable, the sick and the elderly and we protect the big pharma people who are making billions off the sick in our country? Where is their conscience?
This is a perfect example of how the 1% is being protected and the 99% are being subjected to the fallout from that. What a mess!
Glad to see Spilka taking this on. We are lucky to have her as our state Senator.
Glad to see Spilka taking this on. We are lucky to have her as our state Senator.
even more lucky she's the senate pres
Both of them have adopted kids so I guess that's why they get Mass Health
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