Jeopardy – it’s not just a game show anymore!

Did you watch Jeopardy the other day when one of the categories was about brand names of prescription drugs? I found it frightening that no one missed any of them. The clue was the brand name, and contestants had to guess the condition it was meant for. Accutane? Acne. Zoloft? Depression. They knew ‘em all, A to Z.

These are products you can’t just walk into Walgreen’s and buy. You have to go to your doctor, convince them you have (whatever), and that you need (the drug). Doc has to write a prescription, you go to your favorite pharmacy, and they sell you the product (sometimes at an outrageously high price because there is no generic equivalent). Why would the average person, even really smart people, have reason to be familiar with these diverse drugs? Surely they didn’t all have every one of those conditions?

Television advertising. Online advertising. That’s why. Billions - that's with a B -of dollars spent every year in promoting their products. Direct to consumer ads designed to make people think they have a condition and that the manufacturer’s product is the only thing that will fix it. Go tell your doc you need it. And s/he will write the scrip.

Guess who ultimately pays for that? YOU and ME! Not just specifically the high price of drugs, which of course includes the marketing costs, but also the high price of health insurance. Prescription plans get lumped into the expenses of those middlemen, and spread around to everyone with that particular health insurance plan. (And by the way, have you ever paid for your prescription out-of-pocket and compared what they charged your insurance company? Insurance companies pay MORE than cash customers!)

But that’s not the only outrageous aspect of this issue. We’re treating ourselves for things we might not have because some ad made us think we did. Outrageous.

And then there’s The Media, beneficiary of all that advertising expenditure. If your business got billions of dollars from a customer, wouldn’t you go out of your way to treat them nicely? Think about that when you watch the news.

And ultimately, Congress. I could almost cut and paste the sentence from the paragraph above here. (“If your business got billions…”) Forget the big “health care reform” issue on the front pages right now. We’ll get to that in a minute. Consider that Medicare prescription plan put in place near the end of the Bush administration that explicitly forbids the government from negotiation for lower prices. How could even the most corrupt and idiotic legislator sign on to that? But they did. Both sides. Yet they’d all tell you they want to cut waste out of the budget. Yeah, right.

Unless you are hopelessly naïve, you understand that spending by lobbyists, including lunches and trips and parties, and campaign contributions, has had a profound effect on the way Congress votes. And it’s not just one side or the other getting those contributions. It’s virtually everyone, albeit some more than others.

Just look at this Blue Dog lineup… Since 1989, Rep. Earl Pomeroy of North Dakota took in $628,805 from health insurance companies, and $130,999 from the pharmaceutical industry. His pal and fellow North Dakotan Senator Kent Conrad, got $828,000 and $255,000 from those same groups.

The four boys from Tennessee, Democratic Representatives Gordon, Tanner, Cooper, and Davis, each pocketed hundreds of thousands from various health sector donors over the past 20 years, with Tanner getting a quarter mil from the health insurance industry and $300,970 from big Pharma. Are you surprised they’re dragging their feet on the “Public Option?”

Blue Dog Representatives from at least 25 states held their hands out when the health insurance money train went by. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, our source for all these numbers, the “typical Blue Dog Democrat took $10,300 more from the insurers than Non-Blue Dog Democrats,” and “only $3,625 less than the typical House Republican.”

Senators are doing their bit, too. Says the CRP, “Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) has received $1.3 million from the health sector since 1995. Her campaign committee and leadership PAC have also collected more than $155,150 from health insurers.”

Sen. Joe Lieberman has been handed “more than $2.5 million from the health sector since 1989 for his campaign committee and leadership PAC, and more than $455,000 from health insurers.” (Same CRP source.) Surprise surprise!

One more thing. If the campaign contributions have their desired effect, the pharmaceutical manufacturers and other health care industries and special interests of all types, are more than generous with jobs. The legislator can walk away from his responsibility by leaving Congress and working for those who paid the piper and called the tune.

Don’t believe me? Example: Jim McCrery, Republican from Louisiana and former member of the House Ways and Means committee responsible for overseeing health care policy, joined the lobbying firm Capitol Counsel, that got $6.7 million last year from Roche and AstraZeneca (both big Pharma). (Thanks to Bloomberg.com for that one.) He’s not alone. A study by the University of Michigan shows that 27% of federal legislators become lobbyists as their first job after leaving government. 37% more join the K Street mob as their second or third job after leaving.

And all these millions have to come from somewhere, don’t they? It’s hard to say whether more comes from your health insurance premiums or your tax dollars. Either way, wouldn’t it be nice if we could control it?

Call your representatives and senators. NOW! We need health care reform, and we need to stop the gravy train of special interest lobbies.

JM