“Great Drug Companies Out There”

About the time I finished up my post on Biden, I get this article from Dan discussing how Biden is kissing the butts of drug companies to more-than-likely get campaign donations. Everyone else has been concentrating on individual (you know people of lesser means) donations and many candidates have refused to take corporate donations. Biden is not ashamed to take money from corporations. Gee, whata surprise!

Candidate Joe Biden: “By the way, great drug companies out there — except a couple of opioid outfits,” the former vice president told donors at the Dallas home of David Genecov, a craniofacial surgeon.

Biden’s comment came during a discussion of medical research and the cancer “moonshot” initiative he launched during the Obama administration following the death of his son, Beau Biden, in 2015. That effort included his push for companies to collaborate more on research.

While praising the research of pharmaceutical companies, Biden also complained, complained about the high drug prices being experienced by people. Such issues had not stopped him before in supporting Republican candidates for Congress in the last election.

In 2018, Joe Biden came to Michigan’s 6th Congressional District to give a speech to the Economic Club of Southwestern Michigan and pivoted to the topic of Republican Fred Upton at the expense of the Democrat candidate Matt Longjohn. Matt came the closest to beating Upton and Biden gave Fred the boost he needed. Upton had won the district by 20% in previous elections and won it this time by less than 5%.

Biden was paid $200,000 to give a speech to a Republican business crowd supported by Fred Upton in Benton Harbor, Michigan during which he praised GOP Congressman Fred Upton even as Democrats were close to winning Upton’s seat in the gerrymandered Michigan 6th District during the midterms.

It was said Biden came to the 6th District to campaign for Fred Upton because Fred helped to push the 21st Century Cures Act through Congress in support of Biden’s moonshot plan. There is no confirmation of this. The Economic Club of Southwestern Michigan is heavily sponsored by Republican interests and also in one form or another by the Uptons. You would think with Repubs owning the House and the Senate back then, there would be a few issues of making this happen?

Biden’s comments about supporting Upton while campaigning for the presidency?

“I like Republicans. Bless me, father, for I have sinned (Vox).”

Just for the record, fifty-eight pharmaceutical and 26 biotech companies spent $192 million to grease the skids and push the 21st Century Cures Act through Congress. The bill potentially saves drug and device companies $billions in bringing products to market. The Food and Drug Administration will have new authority and tools to speed up approvals and shortcut the process. While Fred Upton was the Energy and Commerce Committee Chair, he took in $1.3 million in donations from health care political action committees (Open Secrets) during that time from the healthcare business. This does not include direct donations.

And the risk of short cutting the clinical trial process will be drugs reaching consumers which may have no impact on their health or can be dangerous to their health. The new process to approve drugs will be to use “data summaries” to support the approval of certain drugs for new indications, rather than complete clinical trial data. Remember, it was not to long ago, the NIH started using “real” women in their trials (A Woman’s Right to Safe Healthcare Outcomes) where previously only men were used. I guess someone finally figured out men and women are not the same and the results or impact of a drug and dosage is different. Pushing the release and approval of a new drug will potentially put the testing of it in the market place using patients.

Biden the defender of Obama’s ACA does not talk about any of this or the: The ACA losing $3.5 billion (30%) of its funding as taken from its Prevention and Public Health Fund established to promote the prevention of Alzheimer’s disease, hospital acquired infections, chronic illnesses and other ailments as a give away to the 21st Century Cures Act. The bill also left the FDA under funded with a miserly boost of $500 million through 2026 to take care of the additional priorities imposed upon the FDA. Neither does Biden talk about how Republicans and Fred Upton did everything possible to sabotage the ACA (Upton was instrumental in killing the Risk Corridor program which caused premiums to increase, Coops to go bankrupt, and companies to withdraw from the exchanges, etc.). Yet, Biden will tell you how the ACA was a huge success and “he likes Republicans.”

As far as Biden being a social activist, look it up yourself as I am not going to comment on it (even though I just did!). Biden does not appear to have a military record either. So what did he do besides cozy up to pharmaceutical companies looking for political donations when everyone else is backing away from corporate America as he is making nice to Republicans at our expense? He is pretty damn good at fabrications.

Other then ACO Hospitals leading the charge in increased costs (Kocher and Berwick), the pharmaceutical industry is right behind them (“Can You Patent the Sun?”)

“The Current 21st Century Cures Legislation Is Still A Bad Deal For Patients,” Ameet Sarpatwari
Michael Sinha, November 30, 2016 In summation:

“Still, we believe the bill’s potential benefits and modestly enhanced funding for scientific advancement are far outweighed by the increased risk of patient harm, and added pressure on the FDA to rush new products to market without adequate evidence. The current 21st Century Cures Act would not drive innovation. Instead, it represents a poor deal for patients.”

Biden Praises Pharma to Donors as He Pushes to Cut Prices, Bloomberg, Jennifer Epstein, September 14, 2019

Run75441 (Bill H)