Tommy Thompson personally cost taxpayers $20 billion a year.
Wisconsin’s Republican Senate candidate Tommy Thompson has been in hot water since video surfacedof him admitting that he wants to “do away with Medicare” and Medicaid. This shocking clip has gone viral, but what is less known about Thompson is how he helped Big Pharma rip off Medicare and how he later tried to help insurers get a piece of Medicaid, too.
In 2003, the Bush administration aggressively pushed for the creation of Medicare Part D, a subsidized drug benefit. Thompson was the “point man” for the administration during these negotations, serving as Bush’s Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary.
While helping seniors afford prescription drugs was a laudable goal, the Bush administration, via Thompson, pushed for a specialAi??carve-outAi??for the pharmaceutical industry. The part D bill specifically barred Medicare from negotiating drug prices with Big Pharma, meaning that it essentially told the government it can’t even ask for a good deal.
This made the new law wildly more expensive than it should be, and most Democrats in the House voted against it. After the benefit was passed, Big Pharma rewarded its most fervent congressional supporter, Louisiana congressman Billy Tauzin, with a $2 million-a-year lobbying job.
But while Tauzin was getting a payoff, taxpayers were losing out. Authoritative studies on the issue estimate that drug negotiation could save as much as $20 billion a year for Medicare.
Thompson, having negotiated this great deal for the industry, soon left his role in the Bush administration. He became a partner atAi??Ai??Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, a leading lobbying firm, where the firm’s clients included leading bio-tech and pharmaceutical companies. He even went on television to shill for one company that was selling identification chips to implant in humans.
He began pushing for “reforms” in Medicaid that would directly benefit a health careAi??maintenanceAi??corporation that had recently installed him on its board.
And now, when he vying for a return to the Senate, his fourth-largest donors are the pharmaceutical companies (they don’t even rank in the top 20 for his opponent Tammy Baldwin). Health insurers are sixth.
All of this paints a clear picture of Thompson. He tells private audiences that he wants to do away with Medicare and Medicaid. But while those programs still exist, he’s happy to let corporations bilk them for as much money as they can, ripping off taxpayers and patients.
Nothing surprises me anymore. It was years ago when I told many that each POTUS should also be judged by the people he brings along with him into office. Bush brought a whole crowd into office with him and the corruptness permeated every nook and cranny of his administration. In fact I once wrote that Dick Cheney would be the perfect professor if any college was to teach a course entitled “The Art of Corporate Malfeasance.” It is a great shame that the country has become like this. It is possible that it was always this way but one cannot argue that it hasn’t been more open than ever before and it is because the arrogance of these crooks really takes the cake.
Too many people like Thompson need to be prosecuted for legislative or executive malfeasance. It is maddening how laws can be passed that are so confusing that corrupt elected and elected officials can get away with doing what is ethically and morally wrong, and then point to a law that states that the behavior is not illegal. Witness the bundling of mortgages that brought the economy to it’s knees. None of these SOB’s will ever be prosecuted with so many willfully ignorant people watching Honey Boo Boo.
I totally agree frank, put them all in jail! But, you know what I don’t get is that the people voting these people into office are the ones hurt most by their new laws pushed to help the wealthy companies backing them. Then turn around and say Democratic voters are jealous of the wealthy. I think American is starting to wakeup, and see the waste President Obama said he eliminated to make Medicaid/Medicare better. Now you can see clearly why Romney wants to repeal it. Doing the right thing by the little guy makes no money!!