Hating the Drug Companies
Inside Report by
Robert Novak
Jul 17, 2003
Republican Rep. Jo Ann Emerson of Missouri, who
tearfully changed her vote three weeks ago to pass the
prescription drug subsidy bill by a single vote, sent a
private memorandum Monday to House Speaker J. Dennis
Hastert. What about my payoff, she asked, of a vote to
permit re-import of cheaper drugs?
Emerson need not have worried. House Republican leaders
do not like re-importation, but such is its support that
they must bring up the bill next week for probable
passage. Nobody expects a Senate filibuster or a
presidential veto. The pharmaceutical industry's pleas
that cheap drugs from Canada will undermine research for
new wonder drugs go unheeded. The more political, if
less credible, argument of a threat to the safety of
American patients also fails.
Agents of pharmaceutical manufacturers have been working
furiously ever since the promise made to Emerson in the
wee hours of June 27. Indeed, nobody outdoes the drug
makers in their bipartisan array of high-priced
lobbyists or their bipartisan campaign contributions.
Yet, with their very existence at risk, the
pharmaceuticals encounter loathing on both sides of the
aisle in Congress as part of a broader epidemic of
anti-corporate hysteria.
Demand for re-importing American drugs, at a
dramatically lower cost to consumers because of Canadian
price controls, is no longer confined to Democratic
politicians from northern border states. The bill pushed
by Emerson is sponsored by Rep. Gil Gutknecht, a
Minnesota Republican with a 95 percent lifetime American
Conservative Union (ACU) rating. Emerson is a cradle
Republican (88 percent ACU), the daughter of the
legendary GOP operative Ab Hermann.
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay kept Gutknecht's
proposal out of the prescription drug bill. He won
Emerson's vote for the prescription bill during an
emotional 2:30 a.m. encounter by promising a separate
vote on the Gutknecht bill. That gave the usually adept
Republican leadership time to win opposing votes, but
their efforts so far have fallen short. Such stalwart
free-market Republican House members as Jeff Flake of
Arizona and Ron Paul of Texas support re-imports. So
does pioneer supply-side economist Arthur Laffer.
Laffer's fellow supply-sider, Stephen Moore of the Cato
Institute, found himself the only person in the room
opposing the Gutknecht bill when he testified before a
House Reform subcommittee June 25. "Rather than
subsidizing new drugs for seniors," said Moore, "the
government should withdraw from this industry
altogether. The free enterprise system will bring these
life-saving new wonder drugs to market more rapidly and
more affordably than will government." Moore's thesis
was totally rejected by the subcommittee chairman,
doughty Indiana conservative (97 percent ACU) Dan
Burton.
That is bitter fruit for an industry that in the 2002
election cycle contributed $16.3 million to Republicans
and $4.4 million to Democrats. Its roster of big-time
lobbyists includes Haley Barbour, Tommy Boggs, Ann
Wexler, Rick Hohlt and Vic Fazio.
"I had no idea that positions were so hardened, and it
seems to me driven by a visceral contempt for the drug
industry," Greg Scandlen of the Galen Institute told his
conservative e-mail correspondents Sunday. "I don't know
where that anger is coming from. I don't buy the idea
that the anger is based just on differential pricing."
It may be coming from dead-of-night legislative ploys,
to extend drug company patents and shield vaccine makers
from lawsuits by families of autistic children (enraging
Rep. Burton, grandfather of an autistic child). One
pharmaceutical lobbyist, asking that his name not be
used, has a theory: "It's the image of arrogant white
boy CEOs, no women or minorities, flying around in Lear
jets."
Beyond pharmaceuticals, the nation that has built
amazing wealth through the profit motive may have
embarked on a populist temper tantrum against corporate
America. The outrage voiced by Democrats has infiltrated
Republican ranks. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's
denunciation of the drug companies for "putting profits
ahead of people" wins surprising Republican assent.
In truth, American companies have provided drugs for the
world that scored victories over heart disease,
diabetes, cancer, polio and other maladies, but now may
be deprived of research funds. Would George W. Bush cast
his first veto to save the geese that laid the golden
eggs?
Robert Novak produces the biweekly newsletter
"Evans-Novak Political Report." Novak has contributed to
most of the nation's periodicals, and he is currently a
roving editor of the Reader's Digest. "Inside Report" is
noted for its rapidly moving dateline and its
hard-hitting analysis of national and international
developments. The Chicago Sun-Times has been the home
newspaper to the column since 1966.
© 2003 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
