Drugsters Back On Top

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What the press refers to as “tweaks” in the new version of health care legislation would appear to hand Big Pharma a sizeable victory, allowing the companies to extend the lifetimes of brand name drugs by selling them at discounted prices within the Medicare drug plan. This is portrayed as a magnanimous gesture by the profitable pharmaceutical makers. And to help the poor guys out a little and lessen the strain on their stockholders’ pocketbooks, the government apparently will come in to pay the companies some of the dough they lose in providing the discounts. Another way of putting this is that it seems the discounts aren’t really discounts at all. In the world of congressional smoke and mirrors, they’ve miraculously become a subsidy.

Government policy ought to push less expensive generic drugs into the marketplace. Mandating their preferred use by Medicare would be one small step in that direction. Generally speaking, the brand-name drugs should be eliminated when their patents run out. The proposed legislation apparently will have the effect of lengthening the company monopoly on brand names, thereby assuring higher, not lower prices.

Although somewhat confusing, this article from the New York Times may help you get a feel for what’s going on.

Bottom line: cost control is sacrificed market monopoly.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

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