On Gucci and Gouging

If there was any chance at real health care reform, it was going to start with restricting direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising from the pharmaceutical industry. The thought that Congress had any real modicum of desire to really change the health care climate today went up in smoke yesterday when the FDA's budget, paid in large part by pharmaceutical interests, was approved by "consumer safety-conscious" congressmen and congresswomen. We need such advertising for pharmaceutical companies, they argued, to assure effective monitoring of DTC ads to assure patient safety!

Huh?

Hey guys and gals, if we didn't have the ads in the first place, they wouldn't have to be monitored, would they?

But there were just too many powerful interests protecting their turf. One quip from the Wall Street Journal's Health Blog really hit home:

But it wasn't Big Pharma that carried the day on the revision; it was the Gucci-loafered lobbyists for media and advertising firms.

Real health care reform doesn't stand a fricking chance as long as our elected officials (and this includes every one of our comb-over presidential candidates) don't take their job seriously and start to vote on behalf of America's best interest, instead of their own.

-Wes