Cliff Schecter: Who’s the Biggest Health Care Hustler?

My friend Cliff Schecter, a Democratic strategist and master kicker of Republican ass on cable news shows, has written an excellent column for the AFL-CIO blog in which he talks about the health-care crisis in America and takes direct aim at the large pharmaceutical companies for placing big profits above the well being of us all.

An excerpt:

In a country where millions go without health insurance — while pharmaceutical company executives sometimes have to struggle to pay for that fifth mortgage in Belize or scrape by to purchase that second corporate jet — Working America members have come up with the worst of the very bad health care hustlers in this nation: Big Pharma.

As part of the Heart of the Health Care Hustle campaign, some 11,000 Working America online voters selected Big Pharma over health insurers and other health providers as the worst hustler. The campaign enables us to get involved by sharing our health care horror stories, and just as importantly, to target which greedy industry and/or company was to blame.

You may know Big Pharma as the quality folks responsible for driving up the price of prescriptions throughout the 50 states by successfully lobbying Congress for a ban on allowing the government to negotiate lower prices for Medicare recipients. Or perhaps for the longtime U.S. ban on allowing Americans to import their prescription drugs from Canada, where they often are half the price of what they cost here.

Please go to the AFL-CIO blog to read the rest of Cliff's column.

Update: Cliff has also written a good piece about Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and how the GOP contender doesn't care much about America ever catching Osama bin Laden. Gee, sounds a bit like the current president, doesn't it? Please go to Cliff's place to read more.