As you so aptly noted, in most heavily lobbied industries, the lowly consumer often retains some freedom of choice. I can choose my banker, or lawyer, or doctor. But, as an insulin-dependent diabetic–I can no longer choose the drug I need to sustain life. As a result of very effective pharma lobbying, my freedom of choice has been eliminated and the insulin cartel has been given almost-monopolistic control over my life.

To most true capitalists, PROTECTIONISM is anathema. But in the case of rDNA insulin, protectionism has worked quite nicely for the insulin cartel. For the consumer . . . not so much.

I am a capitalist at heart, but not when it comes to health care. There are certain drugs that the consumer has no choice but to purchase and very often when there isn’t a generic or a competitor, they are forced into paying the price to take the drug and stay healthy.

I can choose who to bank with, who to purchase insurance from and which law firm to work with. When I really do not like the practice of one particularly business or corporation, I can stop buying their product. But that isn’t always the case with health care.

Americans in congress can be bought to accept some pretty stupid things. Take for instance dis allowing the importation of drugs from Canada because they are cheaper there. Apparently there are “safety” concerns. Personally, I can’t think of any more ludicrous. Not only is the person who perpetuated that myth a complete dolt, but even scarier is that enough people in congress actually believed it. Ladies and Gentlemen we are witnessing the “dummying” of Americans.

The biggest problems with manufacturing seem to come from American plants…Can anybody provide me one example of when there was a “tainted” drug or massive re-call that happened on drugs manufactured in Canada? Be prepared to compare it to our “great” American system’s scorecard.

Not only are we a becoming nation of liars and thieves, but we actually really believe our own baloney. I can hear our neighbors up North having a good chuckle.

If we look at how much is spent on Lobbying, CME, speaker honorariums, advertising, private corporate jets (apparently pharma CEO’s cannot travel with the regular folks…)and commission for sales reps we could cut out a heck of a lot of fat from the price tag.

Take the Graft out of the system and we just might be able to afford our health care…

The key problem with all of these big lobbying spenders, including Big Pharma, is that it is allowed to happen at all.

A system that allows this kind of lobbying to take place gives big money (which is usually large corporate interests) much more influence over our laws and our lives than other interests.

There will always be competing interests and I everyone has a right to communicate with and to try to influence our legislators to a degree.

But a system that is so skewed in favor of monied interests, including but not limited to Big Pharma, is one sick system indeed.

That’s true, to a degree. We were number 15 out of 80 industries in 2006. But don’t forget that there are 14 industries that outspent us:

Commercial banks ($26 million, #10)
Insurance companies ($31 million, #8)
Real Estate companies ($74 million, #4)
Retirees (ie AARP) ($120 million, #2)
Law firms ($121 million, #1)

Suddenly the $22 million spent by pharma companies doesn’t seem quite so bad to me…