subject: Sen. Harry Reid Key Player In Big Pharma's Control Over Washington [print this page] No matter what your political ideology, I think we can all agree that corruption in our political process is endemic and that many politicians are "paid for" or "bought off" by special interests and big business in general. With the structure of campaign finance and political gift giving it is almost guaranteed that this will continue to happen on a mass scale and the average citizen is left on the sidelines without any apparent influence. Aside from voting people into office that will actually work for the good of the country and its citizens the best that we can do is to expose those in power that abuse their position for personal or political gain in the hope that they will replaced with someone more ethical.
In the world of national politics corporate donations are king and are meant to persuade politicians to vote a certain way or try to enact legislation that favors their business or cause. One of the politicians that receives the most donations from special interests is Senator Harry Reid of Nevada. Even though I may agree with some of his progressive views I find it deplorable the amount of money he has accepted from the pharmaceutical industry lobby and what he has done for them in return.
Reid was recently exposed for accepting large sums of money from Big Pharma in order to craft and guide the recently-passed health care bill in Big Pharma's favor. This new healthcare bill does quite a bit of good for people in general by allowing millions of uninsured Americans to obtain reasonable healthcare, but it has also turned out to be a huge give away to the pharmaceutical industry that definitely does not have our health as its top priority but profits. Over the past couple decades while Senator Reid has been in office he has accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars of donations from the pharmaceutical industry lobbyists and directly from pharmaceutical companies themselves.
This new healthcare bill will ensure that Big Pharma maintains its healthcare monopoly and its profits. Ever wonder why your doctor will only either prescribe pharmaceutical drugs or surgery and almost never an alternative or natural cure? Big Pharma has helped politicians like Senator Reid write legislation that makes it all but illegal to do other than what they say is acceptable. A good example is how "Reid successfully stopped Byron Dorgan's drug re-importation amendment from being added to the bill, which would have helped to reduce drug costs for consumers (and cut Big Pharma's profits).
This amendment would have allowed the re-importation of drugs(that Big Pharma companies produced) that were sold to other countries at huge discounts so those savings could be passed on to the consumer but also cut into Big Pharma's profits.
More of this needs to happen. Every politician should have to publicly disclose where ALL of their donations came from and have this posted on a website for everyone to see plus more articles like this exposing the largest recipients.
by: Patrick Hayes
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