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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsCriminal Alex Azar confirmed as HHS Sec. with Democratic complicity
Republicans were two votes shy of making former Eli Lilly executive Alex Azar the next Secretary of Health and Human Services. 6 Democrats made it possible.
According to the roll call vote on the official U.S. Senate website, Senators Tom Carper (D-Delaware), Chris Coons (D-Delaware), Joe Donnelly (D-Indiana), Heidi Heitkamp (D-North Dakota), Doug Jones (D-Alabama) and Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) all voted for Azar’s confirmation in the 55-43 vote. Senator Angus King (I-Maine), who caucuses with Democrats, also voted to confirm Azar. Republican Rand Paul was the lone GOP vote against Azar, with Senators Bob Corker (R-Tennessee) and John McCain (R-Arizona) not voting. If those 6 Democrats and Sen. King voted no, Azar’s confirmation would have failed.
Between 2012 and 2017, Azar was president of pharma giant Eli Lilly’s U.S. division, and oversaw dramatic increases in the prices of life-saving drugs — namely insulin. As Politico reported in November, Eli Lilly jacked up the price of its Humulin R U-500 drug by 325 percent between 2010 and 2015. That same article noted how despite President Trump’s campaigning on lowering prescription drug prices, Azar is a crusader against ideas that would make drug prices more competitive: [Azar]’s spoken out against studies known as comparative effectiveness research, used to determine which drugs are most cost-effective for treating patients with a disease. He argues that all options should be available since different patients may need different medicines. The problem however, is that if payers must make all drugs available, they have little leverage to negotiate lower drug prices with industry.
Azar has also served on the board of a company that specializes in helping public and private sector healthcare providers find loopholes to exploit in order to avoid paying health benefits. As GritPost contributor Ken Klippenstein recently reported in TYT Investigates, Azar served on the board of the Texas-based HMS Holdings Corp. between October of 2016 and November of 2017.
(Short article: just two more brief paragraphs at link)
Source: https://gritpost.com/6-democrats-pharma-hhs/
A unified Democratic front would have stopped this bastard. Why can't we ever seem to get a unified Democratic front when it matters?
Schumer needs to explain why he can't keep his caucus together on the most basic matters. And if he can't explain why, maybe we need a different minority leader.
-app
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dalton99a
(81,455 posts)
sharedvalues
(6,916 posts)appal_jack
(3,813 posts)MattP
(3,304 posts)And Doug Jones is always going to vote like this
appal_jack
(3,813 posts)With Corker and McCain abstaining or gone, and Rand Paul voting "no," a unified Democratic caucus that brought Angus King (I-ME) along would have torpedoed his nomination. Would have been a hopeful ray of sun during these dark times!
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PoiBoy
(1,542 posts)The West Virginia Democrat’s daughter, Heather Bresch, is chief executive of the company, which appears to have hiked the price of the epinephrine auto-injector by 400 percent since 2007. The device, which is used to treat severe allergic reactions, now costs more than $600 per dose.
appal_jack
(3,813 posts)appal_jack
(3,813 posts)“Shame on every Senator who voted to put big pharma CEO Alex Azar, who colluded to triple the price of insulin, in charge of regulating the health care industry. If Azar’s record of corruption is any indication of his future behavior, his tenure will be even shorter than his predecessor Tom Price.”
Earlier today, Lawson confronted Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) on his support for Azar. The confrontation took place during the delivery of 300,000 petitions from activists with Social Security Works, Public Citizen, CREDO Action, People’s Action, Other 98, and UNITE HERE urging Senators to vote no on Azar.
No doubt that the criminal-in-chief in the White House and the 48 Repub Criminal Senators devoid of all conscience or souls deserve much of the blame here, but a unified Democratic vote COULD HAVE BLOCKED THIS NOMINATION!
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mr_lebowski
(33,643 posts)Anyone that possibly would've voted for ANY OF THEM would absolutely not have changed their vote ... had they decided to hold firm and deny this godawful nomination.
However, many who maybe WOULD HAVE ... will now shake their heads in disgust and stay home.
F***ING IDIOTS.
Man I am so beyond pissed off tonight.
sharedvalues
(6,916 posts)I sometimes also wish Ds would vote in lockstep like the GOP. But the GOP is so coherent only because their whole party is purchased by the same set of billionaires.
appal_jack
(3,813 posts)Look, I get that there are nuances to the benefits and drawbacks of particular trade agreements, with both winners and losers among diverse slices of America. The text of the Second Amendment makes certain gun regulation untenable, however much some might find it desirable. Democrats can and do disagree on such, and are all over the place based upon geography, background, and similar factors.
But here we are talking about a corporate price-gouger being appointed to the HHS. There are few examples worse of foxes in henhouses (although the present cabinet is full of most of them: Zinke in Interior, Pruitt at EPA, Mulvaney at CFPB, et-fucking-cetera).
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sharedvalues
(6,916 posts)Just trying to say we shouldn't expect the Democratic Party as a whole to behave like today's autocratic Republican party. The GOP votes in lockstep because of the financial might of billionaires -- they've purged all the moderates and they will primary via dark money anyone who bucks them.
