By Lisa Seachrist
Washington Editor
WASHINGTON ¿ President Clinton blasted the pharmaceutical industry Monday for launching an intensive media campaign aimed at squashing his plan for adding a drug benefit to Medicare.
With Congress trudging toward its final days in the session, Clinton called the campaign ¿one of the key reasons no action was taken on prescription drugs this session¿ and vowed to expose the deceptions in the ads. He also said he had called for a study to examine prescription drug costs in the United States on a state-by-state basis, leaving little doubt the issue of a prescription drug benefit would play a critical role in the 2000 presidential and congressional campaigns.
¿We cannot stand by and watch the pharmaceutical industry go on and distort this debate. We have to expose these deceptions and give the American people the facts,¿ Clinton said in a White House appearance. ¿I wish they¿d spend this ad money explaining why seniors have to get on a bus and go to Canada to buy drugs, at less than half the price that they can buy them in America, when the drugs are made in America.¿
The source of Clinton¿s ire is a series of advertisement featuring ¿Flo,¿ a fictionalized senior citizen, who attacks the president¿s plan for adding a Medicare prescription drug benefit. Those ads were run by an organization called Citizens for Better Medicare ¿ a group founded and funded by the Pharmaceutical Research Manufacturers of America (PhRMA). The ads typically concluded with, ¿I don¿t want big government in my medicine cabinet.¿
¿We believe the punch line the president objects to is accurate,¿ said Jeff Trewhitt, media spokesman for PhRMA. ¿There is some common ground here. We agree there should be coverage under Medicare. We part company when the president talks about a single pharmacy benefit manager having a monopoly on a region. That doesn¿t give seniors choices.¿
President Clinton¿s plan calls for the nation to be divided into regions, and different pharmacy benefit management organizations would bid for the right to supply the drugs to Medicare beneficiaries in that region. PhRMA objects to the winner-take-all nature of the proposal.
¿The selected pharmacy benefit manager will provide a standard set of drugs that [the Health Care Financing Administration] decides is covered by Medicare,¿ Trewhitt said. ¿Once again, it leads to HCFA dictating the provision of health care. We support drug coverage; we just think it should be in the framework of an improved Medicare that relies on competition to provide it.¿
Trewhitt noted congressional critics of the pharmaceutical industry in the past have run well on the Medicare issue, and the president¿s statements mean the parties are gearing up for the election campaigns. ¿People are going to use this issue to their political advantage,¿ Trewhitt said. ¿Especially if it means the Democrats can win back the House.¿
Carl Feldbaum, president of the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO), agreed the issue will be used during the elections, but sees a different origin for the president¿s words.
¿The president is overreacting,¿ Feldbaum said. ¿He was obviously impressed by the Harry and Louise ads, which he blames for the demise of Health Care Reform, and is now out to paint the pharmaceutical industry as the bad guys.¿
Feldbaum said BIO had nothing to do with the Flo ads and noted any actions affecting big pharma will affect biotech companies as well. He also called into question Clinton¿s comparison to the drug prices in Canada.
¿The comparison with Canada is inapt and manifestly unfair,¿ Feldbaum said. ¿They have nationalized health care with heavy price controls. They don¿t produce drugs. They don¿t have a vital and thriving pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry. What I worry about in the comparison is no one is going to make these points.¿
Both Trewhitt and Feldbaum believe a Medicare drug benefit is dead this year. For that reason, Trewhitt said the Flo ads will take a back seat until the issue heats up again.