We already told you, we could Medicareless, Part 2

So if seniors don't benefit from the new Medicare program, who does?

"Drug Makers Move Closer to Big Victory"

As Congress edged closer to passing a Medicare drug benefit that prohibits the government from using its buying clout to win discounts, one thing was clear: the drug industry appeared on the cusp of an enormous victory, gained in part by millions in political donations and an expensive lobbying campaign. ...

Drug makers have pressed hard for the legislation, because most executives believe that a Medicare drug benefit will forestall efforts to legalize drug imports or control drug prices. ...

Indeed, the Medicare legislation is better than the gloomiest pictures that investors imagined, and perhaps for that reason, shares of many of the largest drug companies rose on Monday. ...

"[Y]ou're getting a drug benefit, and the two things we were most scared about - drug importation and price controls - aren't in the bill," said Richard Evans, an analyst for Bernstein Research.

Unsurprisingly, that's only the start as far as BigPharma is concerned:

"Drug Industry Seeks to Sway Prices Overseas"

WASHINGTON, Nov. 26 - Having beaten back price controls on prescription drugs in the United States, the American pharmaceutical industry is trying to roll them back overseas, with help from the administration and Congress.

In talks over a free trade agreement with Australia, American officials are pressing to water down the system under which the Australian government negotiates the prices it pays for prescription drugs, Mark Vaile, the Australian minister for trade, said here Wednesday. ...

If successful, the United States could use this agreement as a benchmark for trade deals with other rich nations. Loosening price controls is a priority for the drug industry, which gets most of its profits in the United States and argues that prices here could be lower if other nations paid their share of the cost of developing drugs. ...

But rather than demand an increase in foreign spending on research and development, as some specialists have suggested, the administration is asking that countries agree to pay American drug companies more for medicines they buy for their government health programs. ...

The World Trade Organization now enforces intellectual property rights, including drug patents, in large part because of industry pressure.

And though the United States bowed to pressure and agreed to help poor nations buy generic medicines through exemptions from trade rules, the drug companies contend that wealthy nations use the negotiating power of their national health systems to demand unfair, arbitrary prices.

So let's sum up:

Despite being the most profitable industrial sector of the economy and despite getting tens of billions of dollars in new subsidized business through Medicare, the pharmaceutical industry continues to whine that it's not making enough money and how "unfair!" it is for anyone to try to negotiate lower prices through bulk purchases. The companies even gripe about having to deal with those mean old insurance companies:

But worries abound in the industry. Many drug executives predict that the additional volume of sales they will earn from Medicare beginning in 2006, when the benefit is scheduled to take effect, will be balanced by discounts they will have to provide to the health plans and insurers that will negotiate prices for Medicare beneficiaries.

(From "Drug Makers Move")

The industry also complains it needs more money because it's R&D costs are so, like, you know, just so wow high. But instead of encouraging more R&D by nations, it aggressively protects patent rights, tries to obstruct use of generics, and pushes for trade agreements that will guarantee higher medicine prices for multiple tens of millions of people around the world. The net result is not only to make BigPharma even richer but to make it even more than now the source of new or improved medicines, all of them protected by corporate-held patents, producing more and more control over the health (and pocketbooks) of more and more people.

They must be on drugs.

Footnote, Unintentional Humor Dept.:

Officials in Mr. Zoellick's [Robert B. Zoellick, the United States trade representative] office said that no formal proposal had been put in writing. "What we are looking at are ways to reward innovative medicine and to promote transparency," said a senior American trade official.

Seeing a member of the Bush administration talking about "transparency" is almost worth the price of admission.

Footnote, Wag the Dog Dept.:

"This is all going on in this larger context of growing unrest in the United States that other countries are not paying their share of the cost of pharmaceutical research," said Ian Spatz, vice president for public policy at Merck & Company.

That's certainly something I've heard a lot of "unrest" about, haven't you?

(Both of the above from "Drug Industry Seeks")