Pharmaceutical interests have been flooding in donations to Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., who has emerged as the chief roadblock to Democrats’ plan to allow Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices.
Between July and September, Sinema raised at least $100,000 from the pharmaceutical industry and donors at a private equity firm in the business of outsourcing pharmaceutical research and development, according to her campaign finance report filed Friday.
While Sinema previously campaigned on lowering drug prices, Politico reported last month that Sinema had informed President Joe Biden that she opposes the party’s signature drug pricing initiative, which would finally allow Medicare to use its bulk purchasing power to lower prices.
Democratic leaders have planned to include the drug pricing measure, which would save the government hundreds of billions of dollars over 10 years, in the party’s $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill, as a way to finance other portions of Biden’s economic, health care, and climate agenda.
According to a recent Politico newsletter, “Democrats would be lucky if they managed to convince Sinema to support a version of drug pricing reform that raises even $200 billion.”
News of Sinema’s opposition to the drug pricing legislation arrived shortly after a pharmaceutical industry front group launched a TV and radio ad campaign in Arizona praising the freshman senator for her “independence,” calling her “a bipartisan leader” in the mold of the late Sen. John McCain.
Sinema’s new federal election filing shows she raised roughly $55,000 in the third quarter from drug industry executives and political action committees.
The donors included PACs for drugmakers Abbvie, Alexion Pharmaceuticals, Astellas, Eisai, Eli Lilly, EMD Serono, Horizon Pharma, Lundbeck, Sunovion Pharmaceuticals, and Takeda Pharmaceuticals.
She also received donations from executives at Abbvie, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, Genentech, Gilead Sciences, Lundbeck, Merck, Otsuka, and Sage Therapeutics, and the powerful drug lobby Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA).
Sinema additionally received about $47,000 from executives at Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe. The private equity firm owns a big stake in Abzena, a company it describes as an “outsourced research, development and manufacturing services provider to biopharmaceutical companies.”
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It’s way past the time to stop playing nice with Sinema & Manchin. Why aren’t the, so-called, “progressives” going full on attack mode? The “Squad” could mobilise HUGE numbers to come out onto the streets and protest both AT the obstructionists and the prospect of Dem leadership bending to the demands and cutting Drug Price reform (& other items) from the bill, and IN SUPPORT of the Bill? Large numbers of people protesting outside Congress would focus some minds. The fact that they aren’t calling people onto the streets tells me it’s going to be yet another instance of the Squad et al providing cover for the same old Democrat bs.
Jason, Your thoughts and ideas are absolutely perfect. Manchin and sinema have to go. I cannot believe she has done this after she told me she was all for Medicare for all and I was even dumb enough to vote for this two-faced person. Why did I get screwed along with so many other people. It just seems to me if somebody says they’re going to do what they’re going to do and you vote them into office and then they change their mind where is my retribution other than what you have suggested. where is my retribution other than what you have suggested.
Yes, campaign manifesto “promises” should be a legally binding document. There would then at least be some legal ramifications for politicians who blatantly deceive voters and don’t fulfil their side of the bargain.
Sinema should not be IN the dnc. Period. See my franchise comment below.
Our Revolution has people protesting Sinema every day at her office. They have promised to make her life more uncomfortable.They also have groups in other states targeting those who are trying to kill the bill as well as taking out ad campaigns.
Yes, that’s great and I stand in solidarity with them, but if huge numbers were mobilised it would make all the difference.
Agreed. It’ll all be moot come the mid-terms anyway. The Dems learn nothing from Obama’s “Shlacking” and have once again done nothing, or very little, of policies that offer a substantive improvement on the lives of most low-paid workers. The same, mostly black & brown, workers whom they promise so much and rely on for votes yet do so little in return for that loyalty. They’ve finally had enough it seems from all the polling.