Of all the participants in health reform, the fattest cats came out of it smelling the best — a telling indictment of Obama and Baucus.
Drugs are the most profitable sector of health care. Pharmaceutical companies make more than $1 trillion annually, a third of that in the United States. Their profits not only dwarf those of other health sectors but pharmaceutical also ranks seventh highest out of 215 industries tracked by Morningstar, an investment research company.
For years, the drug makers’ consigliere was Louisiana congressman Billy Tauzin. A conservative Democrat who rose to the position of assistant majority whip only to switch sides after Republicans won the House in 1994, he compares the situation to reaching a fork in the Yellow Brick Road.
“I had one hand on a party that desperately needed a brain and another on a party that desperately needed a heart, and I had to make a choice,” he says today. “I decided to go with the party that needed a heart, because heart-transplant surgery was possible.”