People Before Profit blog

Prescription politics: Surge in drug prices follows Republican Medicare Part D program

Fri, 28 Jul 2006 07:47:00 +0000

Two recent studies have shown that prescription drug prices rose significantly during the first quarter of the year. AARP, an advocacy organization for older Americans, found that the prices charged by pharmaceutical companies for brand-name drugs increased by almost 4 percent.

The AARP study determined that brand-name drug prices increased at more than four times the rate of inflation during the first three months of this year. Older Americans take an average of four prescription drugs a month; this increase means that the cost of these prescriptions rose by almost $240 between the first quarter of 2005 and the first quarter of 2006.

It’s no coincidence that there was a surge in drug prices earlier this year. The pharmaceutical industry purposefully raised the prices shortly before the new Medicare Part D drug program, which provides prescription drug benefits to seniors, took effect. The Bush administration ensured that the Medicare Prescription Drug Improvement and Modernization Act contained a provision barring Medicare from negotiating price discounts with pharmaceutical companies. This was a huge windfall for the drug companies. A Boston University study found that 61 percent of Medicare funding spent on prescription drugs becomes profit for the pharmaceutical companies.

The pharmaceutical industry has spent vast amounts of money to ensure that drug prices remain high, according to a recent analysis by The Center for Public Integrity. The center found that in 2003 and 2004, prescription drug companies and their trade organization, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), spent more than $44 million lobbying against measures in numerous states to regulate drug prices. And the industry donated more than $8 million to politicians. State governments purchase 16 percent of all prescription drugs in America.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 33 states have attempted to enact programs aimed at cutting the cost of prescription drugs since 2003. In response to these efforts, PhRMA’s top priority has been to “advocate against any attempts to impose price controls.” And PhRMA has enjoyed considerable success.

Massachusetts state Sen. Mark Montigny was the 2005 chairman of a consortium of legislators from many states that champions price restrictions. According to Montigny, “We are being squashed by the pharmaceutical industry money. They have killed lots and lots of legislation across the country.”

The success of the pharmaceutical industry in subverting price controls has allowed drug companies to dramatically increase prices. Earlier this year Ovation Pharmaceuticals bought the right to manufacture and market the cancer drug Mustargen from Merck. In less than a month the cost of a two-week prescription of Mustargen jumped from $77.50 to $548.01. And when Ovation bought the rights to Panhematin, a drug used to treat a rare enzymatic disease, it raised the price from $230 a dose to $1,900.

There’s ample evidence that the federal government can successfully control drug prices when it wants to. The Department of Veterans Affairs is required to negotiate the best prices possible. Consequently, the VA is paying 46 percent less for many popular brand-name drugs than the average prices available under the Medicare plans for the same drugs.

If the Democrats are looking for a moral values issue to campaign on in the fall elections, they need look no further. We need a Congress and a president who are willing to take on the pharmaceutical industry, and authorize the FDA to regulate drug prices on behalf of the American public. If we fail to do so, access to prescription drugs will increasingly be a luxury only for the affluent.

Child poverty: U.S. leads industrialized nations with appallingly high rates

Fri, 28 Jul 2006 07:37:00 +0000

Government policies, such as tax policy and transfers, have the potential to greatly reduce high child poverty rates that would otherwise prevail if left solely to the market incomes families receive from work and other sources. The anti-poverty effectiveness of such policies varies considerably across countries. Compared to other industrialized nations, the United States is woefully lagging: even after government intervention, over one-fifth of all U.S. children were living in poverty in 2000.

The figure above shows child poverty rates both before and after government intervention for 16 developed countries. Excluding the United States, the average rate of child poverty without governmental assistance was 21.1 percent. That is, the distribution of income based solely on market outcomes left about a fifth of children in poverty. Poverty is defined as families with incomes below one-half the median income for that country, which is a traditional poverty measure for international comparisons.

Before taxes and transfers, the United States had one of the highest market-based rates of child poverty in 2000: 26.6 percent. Four other countries — New Zealand, France, the United Kingdom, and Ireland — had comparably high market rates of child poverty.

The figure also shows that U.S. policies were relatively ineffective in supplementing poverty-level incomes to keep children out of poverty. After taking into account the taxes (including refundable taxes) and transfers, the U.S. still led the 16 developed countries in child poverty. On average, government taxes and transfers in the other 15 countries reduced child poverty significantly — by about half — dropping 10.4 percentage points to 10.7 percent. France had the largest redistributive decline of 20.2 percentage points to a child poverty rate of 7.5 percent. By contrast, the U.S. rate was reduced by just 4.7 percentage points to 21.9 percent — by far the highest child poverty rate of all 16 developed countries, even after government assistance.

The contrast between the great wealth in the United States and such appallingly high child poverty rates is quite stark. The United States needs to make a strong commitment to reduce child poverty.

With research assistance from Rob Gray.

Reprinted with permission from the Economic Policy Institute, epinet.org.

International month of action set for Cuban Five

Fri, 21 Jul 2006 06:10:00 +0000

Commentary

The hurricane season is under way and Cuba once again finds itself in the eye of a political storm. While five Cuban political prisoners languish in U.S. jails waiting to hear the decision of a counter-appeal lodged with the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta last September, the Bush administration released a second report from the so-called Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba. The report reinforces the administration’s aggressive annexationist plans for the socialist island.

Unashamedly committed to the idea of illegal regime change in Cuba following the death of Fidel Castro, the commission calls for $80 million in spending over the next two years to fund “opposition groups” in Cuba, a propaganda offensive to break “the Castro regime’s information blockade,” and support for international efforts to assist U.S. corporations and their cronies in a bid to recolonize the island.

In addition to promising “emergency food supplies, water, fuel and medical equipment” for an eventual compliant “transitional government,” the plan provides for the return of property to the oligarchy of pre-revolutionary times, the dismantling of social security from which millions of Cubans benefit, the privatization of schools and hospitals, and the persecution and trial of members of the island’s political and mass organizations.

The most disturbing element of the report is the inclusion of a secret appendix that remains classified in the interests of national security. In short, the report is written in a way that would gladden the hearts of individuals like Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles, who have been called the Osama bin Ladens of the Western Hemisphere, and enjoy impunity as a reward for their past services.

It is in this hostile climate that Gerardo Hernandez, Ramon Labanino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando Gonzalez and Rene Gonzalez remain unjustly imprisoned in the U.S. for defending their people against such terrorists responsible for the lives of almost 3,500 Cubans and the injury of 2,000 compatriots.

The Cuban Five won their appeal last year against the phony charges of conspiracy to commit espionage and murder, on the grounds that they could not have received a fair trial in Miami.

An International Month of Action from Sept. 12 – Oct. 6 is set to highlight the case. Unfortunately, in the U.S. the case has only seen the light of day in the mass media when the U.S. Free the Five Committee placed an advertisement in The New York Times in 2004 and recently the Washington Post ran a front-page article (see PWW Online eXtra http://www.pww.org/

article/articleview/9266/1/266/).

In the UK there will be delegations to the U.S. Embassy and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on the anniversary of the arrest of the Five on Sept. 12, 1998, together with caucus meetings at the Labour Party and Trades Union Congress conferences later in the month.

This author along with lawyer Steve Cottingham will also tour the UK speaking about the case and raising awareness.

In Washington, D.C., there will be a rally and demonstration on Sept. 23 to highlight the ongoing struggle for justice against U.S.-sponsored terrorism in Cuba and Latin America. Thirty years after the car-bombing assassination of Orlando Letelier, former Chilean Foreign Affairs Minister under Salvador Allende, and U.S. activist Ronnie Moffit on Washington’s Embassy Row, and 30 years after the midair bombing of the Cubana plane that killed 73 people — crimes perpetrated by U.S.-backed terrorists — justice for the victims of terrorism is still out of reach.

Justice is still delayed in the case of the Cuban Five, who are now paying the price for blocking terrorism directed toward their own country.

Those of us who share the belief that “another world is possible” should show our solidarity by turning out in force across the world during this Month of Action and demonstrate our support for these fighters against terrorism and its causes.

Geoff Bottoms is the coordinator of the UK’s Cuba Solidarity Campaign to Free the Cuban Five.

NLRB feels street heat

Fri, 21 Jul 2006 05:04:00 +0000

NewsAnalysis

The streets outside the National Labor Relations Board office in Washington were sizzling, and it wasn’t just the July heat. For the first time in its 70-year history, the board was shut down for two hours July 13 as nine union and religious leaders, backed by 1,500 labor supporters, blocked traffic outside. It was a pre-emptive strike on a pending NLRB decision on three potentially far-reaching cases.

The details of the cases are complicated — they deal with the legal definition of who is a supervisor — but the bottom line is that, in a worst case scenario, a board decision could give the nation’s employers the right to legally bar up to 8 million U.S. workers from being union members.

They would do this by designating as a “supervisor” anyone who has skills, gives direction to others and exercises judgment. A nurse, a construction crew leader or a powerhouse dispatcher might be anointed a “supervisor” by the federal labor board. They won’t get a raise in pay, an expense account or even a high-back chair. But they will be left without any protection, even subject to firing. And the bargaining power of their co-workers will be diminished.

When a group of people work together every day, confronting the same workplace issues like health and safety, for example, should they be required to go it alone in dealing with their employer? Or should our country’s laws give them the right to join together and bargain collectively?

The majority of America’s 125 million workers support such a right. In fact, a majority of workers say they would join a union if given a chance. The Bush administration labor policy is all about making sure they don’t get that chance.

The demonstrators had good reason to take pre-emptive action. In previous decisions, the NLRB, which now consists of five Bush appointees, said that temporary workers can only join unions with their bosses’ permission. It ruled that college teaching assistants who are graduate students aren’t union-eligible workers because their status is “educational,” and that disabled workers are barred because their work is “rehabilitative.”

Other Bush-controlled agencies have further sliced and diced the working class, removing collective bargaining from the reach of civilian employees of the Department of Defense, federal workers in transportation and the Department of Homeland Security. Decisions by pro-business judges have denied the protection of labor law to the millions of members of our country’s working class who are undocumented.

What’s new in this battle is that labor isn’t giving an inch. The D.C. action was one of 21 demonstrations in as many cities in a week of action starting July 10 called by the AFL-CIO. Leading up to the actions, the labor movement mobilized 130,000 members and supporters to send messages to Congress in support of workers’ rights to a collective voice at work.

Stewart Acuff, the AFL-CIO’s organizing director, credited the federation’s affiliates for the strong mobilization. That represents a more sophisticated level of understanding and commitment by labor leaders and the rank and file to a complex issue that spans politics and collective bargaining.

Reports from the demonstrations pointed to 10,000 grassroots participants. Teamsters, Steelworkers, Carpenters, nurses from many unions and phone workers, among others, were on the scene. Local labor federations and Jobs with Justice worked together in coordinating the actions.

Besides nurses, building trades workers in particular are concerned with what the NLRB might do. With a bad decision, up to 20 percent of their members could lose their rights to union membership.

Acuff said it’s hard to see how even the Bush-appointed board could ignore workers’ voices. The decision on the supervisor question, he told the World, could come down anywhere on a wide spectrum. In the worst-case scenario, which could purge up to one-third of registered nurses from their unions, the employers and government could expect health care strikes and serious disruptions in the economy.

The NLRB-protest actions build on a several-year-long campaign spearheaded by Acuff to support the right to organize as a human rights issue. The campaign has focused on building support for the Employee Free Choice Act, which would give workers a direct path to unionization, bypassing pro-employer NLRB procedures. Remarkably, the EFCA is only two supporters short of a majority in the House.

If a change in Congress is achieved this November, the rising consciousness and activity of the rank and file may be able to make the difference in winning some victories in the battle for rights for working people in the U.S.

Roberta Wood (rwood@pww.org) is labor editor of the People’s Weekly World. Pepe Lozano, Marilyn Bechtel and Denise Winebrenner Edwards contributed.

Public broadcasting needs a whole new system

Fri, 14 Jul 2006 08:36:00 +0000

On June 7, congressional Republicans launched their latest assault on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) when a House Appropriations subcommittee voted to cut $115 million from its budget. The cuts would affect PBS, NPR and other noncommercial media like Pacifica Radio.

This is the second time in less than nine months that the GOP has attempted to slash the CPB budget. And once again, public broadcasting’s defenders are mustering up their troops to “Save Big Bird.” But the broader issues remain overlooked: Is public broadcasting delivering on its promise of offering a true alternative to commercial broadcasting? Does the CPB really, as its mission statement proclaims, “encourage the development of programming that involves creative risks and that addresses the needs of unserved and underserved audiences, particularly children and minorities”?

We believe that the honest answer to these questions is “no.” It’s time to stop trying to save the CPB from budget cuts and corrupt leadership; we need to cut the purse strings and develop new, independent funding mechanisms.

The CPB has become a tool used by congressional conservatives to restrict programming within narrow political limits. Each successive attack from the right weakens public broadcasting as programmers become more skittish and public TV’s habit of survival through capitulation becomes more ingrained.

Over the years, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) studies have consistently found a pro-establishment and pro-corporate tilt in PBS’s and NPR’s national news and public affairs programming. Though PBS is mandated to present a wider spectrum of opinion than for-profit media do, it is often hard to distinguish the guest lists of public broadcasting’s programs from those of their commercial counterparts. If the CPB’s government funding contributes to the homogenization and stifling of diverse voices on what is meant to be independent media, how much effort should be made to fight to protect that funding?

As long as there has been public broadcasting, there have been calls to create an alternative funding structure for PBS and NPR that would replace the CPB. Different fiscal schemes have been suggested, from selling unused spectrum to taxing commercial advertising or television sets (as Britain does for the BBC).

One such proposal, drafted by FAIR founder Jeff Cohen and Vassar professor William Hoynes and promoted by the group Citizens for Independent Public Broadcasting (CIPB), envisions an independent trust, perhaps funded by a tax on advertising or commercial broadcast license sales, that could generate $1 billion in annual funding for a robust, truly independent public broadcasting system. While that may sound ambitious, the trust recommendation pointed to some hopeful signs in recent history:

“In 1998, House Telecommunications Subcommittee leaders Billy Tauzin and Edward Markey designed a bill (later withdrawn) to create a permanent PBS trust fund, abolish the CPB and phase out commercial underwriting messages. The Gore Commission on the social responsibilities of digital broadcasters strongly recommends that Congress create a trust fund for public television and eliminate ‘enhanced underwriting’ by corporations. A December 1998 poll by Lake, Snell, Perry & Associates found an overwhelming 79 percent of the American public favoring a proposal to require commercial broadcasters to pay 5 percent of their revenues into a fund to support public broadcasting programming.”

Would creating an independent revenue source for public broadcasting be hard work? Definitely. But the latest GOP attack is a reminder that without fundamental changes in the way it is funded, public broadcasting will continue to be vulnerable to the political whims of Congress. As FAIR pointed out last time, if public broadcasting defenders continue merely to fight to protect the CPB budget, the same potential for using the CPB appropriation process as a tool to force public broadcasting further to the right will still exist, and public broadcasting will have to be “saved” again and again — most likely at the cost of yet more concessions to right-wing Republicans.

Peter Hart and Steve Rendall are analysts with Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, www.fair.org. This article was distributed by MinutemanMedia.org.

Bush may try to revive immigrant legislation

Fri, 14 Jul 2006 05:49:00 +0000

News Analysis

Many thought that immigration legislation had been killed by the Republicans in the House, but maybe, to paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of its death are exaggerated. If the logjam between the House and Senate breaks soon, the immigrants’ rights movement will have to step up its activity.

In December, the House passed HR 4437, with draconian anti-immigrant measures, turning undocumented immigrants and those who help them into felons, and no legalization of the undocumented.

In May, after massive pro-immigrant demonstrations, the Senate Committee on the Judiciary passed a less repressive “comprehensive” bill which allowed for the legalization of most undocumented. It would also have set up a problematic guest worker program.

But Senate Republicans pushed the final bill, S 2611, in a more anti-immigrant direction. Only those undocumented who had been in the country longest would be able to “legalize,” fines for legalization were jacked up, and an amendment declares English to be the “national language.” Key due process rights would be damaged.

Most immigrants’ rights supporters conclude that the Senate bill is not acceptable without further amendments.

The next normal step would be for the Senate and House to name members to a conference committee to reconcile the two bills. But Republican leaders of the House initially refused to name their conference committee members. Instead, they organized a series of anti-immigrant hearings around the country, to drum up opposition to S 2611, and support for the “enforcement only” approach. Senate Judiciary Committee chair Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) organized his own hearings in Philadelphia on July 5. Meanwhile, Homeland Security continues to increase immigration raids and deportations.

The House hearings were widely denounced even in the corporate press as an election gimmick. At a hearing in San Diego, Democrats Raul Grijalva (Ariz.), Grace Napolitano (Calif.) and others managed to undermine the Republicans by getting witnesses, chosen to represent a tough law enforcement point of view, to admit that deporting immigrants would harm the economy, and that having local police do immigration enforcement would divert resources from fighting crime.

At Specter’s hearing, Michael Bloomberg, New York’s Republican mayor, bluntly stated that if all undocumented immigrants were deported, his city’s economy would collapse. The Rev. Luis Cortes Jr., president of Esperanza USA, explained that if local and state police were assigned to do immigration enforcement, crime fighting would be harmed because immigrants would fear talking to the police.

Ellen Connelly, executive director of the Pennsylvania State Council of The Service Employees union, said, “As long as employers have the ability to exploit workers because they lack legal status, the current system will continue to drive down wages and benefit standards for all workers.” Only legalization will solve this problem, she said.

And in a hearing held by the Senate Armed Forces Committee on July 10, witnesses testified that threatening immigrants with deportation might undermine the morale of the many immigrants, and people with undocumented immigrant relatives, who currently serve in the armed forces. General Peter Pace, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, became quite emotional when relating the experiences of his Italian immigrant parents.

Meanwhile, Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) is functioning as an emissary between President Bush and the House and Senate Republican leaderships so that a bill can be passed and signed before November. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has suggested that the conference committee might be getting under way soon. Judging from comments he made in Chicago on July 7, Bush appears agreeable to legislation which first implements the House Republicans’ enforcement-only approach, while promising to “phase in” guest worker and legalization programs “later.” Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez has also suggested that the administration may be pressing for a quick resolution.

House Republican hard-liners have said they will accept a guest worker program but not “amnesty.” Thus the danger is that Congress may pass a bill containing no help for the undocumented and a severe increase in repression, while adding an anti-labor guest worker program. Demonstrations and lobbying are essential to prevent this.

There has been a lull in the large-scale marches for immigrants’ rights. It will be necessary for immigrants and their supporters to hit the streets again during the summer to protest the raids and deportations as well as bad legislation, and also to massively register voters for November, when removing at least six Republican senators and 15 House members will change the legislative balance of forces in a direction more favorable to immigrants.

GOP can be beat in November, CPUSA says

Fri, 07 Jul 2006 05:07:00 +0000

NEW YORK — Ending Republican majority control of the U.S. House and Senate in the midterm elections Nov. 7 “is a battle that can be won,” said Joelle Fishman, chair of the Communist Party USA’s Political Action Commission, speaking to a meeting June 25 of the party’s national committee.

She pointed out that it will take a Democratic pickup of 15 House seats and six Senate seats to end the Republican majority, clearing the way to move long-stalled bills calling for an end the occupation of Iraq and for passage of the Employee Free Choice Act to facilitate union organizing.

“Defeat of the ultra-right Republicans is at the heart of the class struggle at this moment,” she added, “a necessary and crucial step toward achieving a better life, bigger dreams and building the movement for socialism.”

Present were CPUSA leaders from across the nation who reported on their work in the labor, immigrant rights and peace movements to mobilize a powerful voter turnout Nov. 7. The recent demonstrations for immigrant rights and an end to the Iraq war have made possible a November victory that seemed a long shot last fall, Fishman said.

Bush seeks to “enshrine in granite that corporate ‘rights’ are absolute and that the working class has no rights that corporations are bound to respect,” she said.

A GOP defeat “will make an important beginning to shift the balance of forces and create the conditions for a decisive blow to the ultra-right.” But if the Republicans retain their House and Senate majority, she said, “it will be a very dangerous situation domestically and internationally.”

Terrie Albano, editor of the People’s Weekly World, called for a September through December fund drive to raise $200,000 for the paper and a subscription drive to win 300 new readers. “We have a message of solidarity and ‘it takes a struggle to win’ victories,” she said. “It takes knowing who the main enemy is and working like hell to defeat them.”

Judith Le Blanc, a leader of United for Peace and Justice, said, “A change in Congress will make it more possible to end the occupation of Iraq and bring the troops home.” She urged a greater effort to mobilize the peace majority in the 2006 midterm elections.

“The Republicans are united in a policy totally at odds with the views of the people,” she said. “Eight months ago, two Democratic senators were for withdrawal. This week, 39 voted for withdrawal.”

Rick Nagin, an Ohio CP leader, said the labor movement and other progressive forces are using a ballot referendum to raise Ohio’s minimum wage to reach out to voters in rural and southern Ohio, a bastion of the Republican Party. The referendum could prove decisive in Rep. Sherrod Brown’s drive to oust Republican Sen. Michael DeWine, Nagin said.

Rosalio Muñoz, leader of the Southern California CP, hailed the millions who have marched for immigrant rights. “Without the profound change in the AFL-CIO policy of recent years, the present upsurge couldn’t have taken place,” he said, urging support for “freedom summer” to push for legalization and a path to citizenship for 13 million or more immigrants.

Pending before the meeting was a proposal to transfer the CPUSA archives to the Tamiment Library in New York. Michael Nash, director of the Tamiment, told the meeting of plans to preserve and make the archives available to scholars and a far wider public. After a lively discussion, the proposal was approved by an overwhelming vote.

John Rummel, leader of the Michigan Communist Party, reported on the grave crisis in the auto industry centered on former GM subsidiary Delphi’s drive to slash wages as low as $10 per hour. He called it a “race to the bottom … a period of unprecedented theft from the working class to the rich.” The question looming is whether the Delphi workers will walk out on strike, he said.

Jarvis Tyner, CPUSA executive vice chair, reported on the dramatic renovation of CPUSA headquarters in New York’s Chelsea district. This is already turning the eight-story building from a major expense to an important source of rental income, he said.

The crowd gave standing ovations for both Erica Smiley, incoming national coordinator of the YCL, and Jessica Marshall, who is leaving that post.