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In “The Devil in Anna Eshoo’s Details,” an article by Jane Hamsher about the effort of Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-CA) to say that she’s against protecting manufacturers of life-saving "biologic" drugs from ever having to face competition from generic "biosimilar" versions (i.e. to deny generic versions of life-saving drugs from ever getting to people who need them), while the language of her legislation does exactly that, Jane wrote:
I’m sure [Rep. Eshoo] is not trying to be intentionally misleading.
And:
I look forward to Rep. Eshoo’s swift action to change the language in the health care bill before it is passed and drug companies start asserting protections she stridently says she doesn’t want to grant them.
While I fully understand Jane’s intensions here, I want to point out the big holes in Rep. Eshoo’s recent attack on Jane at HuffPost and call out her shamelessness in thinking that she can have it both ways more directly.
Rep. Eshoo clearly wants to say out of one side of her mouth:
My amendment prohibits by its plain language exactly what Ms. Hamsher alleges it would encourage.
While, out of the other side, she wants to endlessly justify granting manufacturers of biotechnology products a permanent monopoly:
For biologics, any prospective competitor to a brand-name product would have to go through the same lengthy and expensive approval process and clinical trials as the original manufacturer.
Biotechnology products are highly complex and, unlike traditional chemical drugs, they cannot be precisely duplicated by a second manufacturer.
And, of course:
Biotechnology products cost billions of dollars to develop, test and bring to market, and in order to ensure that competitors aren’t immediately allowed to free-ride on the costly safety and efficacy data produced by innovators, some period of ‘data exclusivity’ is necessary to allow some period of time to recoup the investment in developing the drug.
So “some period of ‘data exclusivity’” becomes a never-ending period, right?
I also really liked how she repeatedly tied herself to Senator Kennedy, as if an attack on her is an attack on him, too.
What total bullshit.
6 Comments
Great diary!
nice job deconstructing Ms. Eshoo’s argument, Knoxville!
Thanks!
As Jane says, the devil is in Anna Eshoo’s details. It’s like Eshoo wants everyone to look at her smile and not bother much looking at what she’s really doing.
Worse, she thinks that she can play the victim while attacking Jane for uncovering what she’s really doing.
Frankly, all anyone should see in Eshoo’s little rant at HuffPost is her frustration at Jane for having caught her in bed with PhRMA.
Things are moving in the right direction in the Senate! In case you missed it last night, see David Dayen’s “Sherrod Brown: Biologics Should Not Be Subject To An “Endless Monopoly Period” and especially Jane’s comment there @ 6.
Thank you, Senator Brown!
Thanks Knoxville. It’s a great one.
It’s a very unequal contest. Anna’s taking on the top Firedog at calling at calling bullshit.
Real Democrats need to take a hard look at current patent, trademark, and copyright proetections in general. The effect of escalating private industry privileges without regard to the public interest has been made very clear in the healthcare arena, but it affects all aspects of the economy as well.
Patent, trademark, and copyright are supposed to be limited monopolies granted for the public benefit. But both the limits and the benefit have largely disappeared. The resulting monopolies stifle innovation and bias the economy in favor of some parties and against all others.
This is paricularly true at present, when the favored players, Big Pharma and Big Entertainment, are major backers of the Democratic Party apparatus. Startups in these areas can’t start because too many ideas are tied up by the big players and their lawyers in too much expensive red tape (I rather wonder if my own industry–open systems computing–could ever have started if the “intellectual property” claims that are routinely made now had been recognized 25 years ago). Meanwhile, other industries–autos and steel-making–don’t get the favored treatment, have to pay the inflated costs (via their health plans), and thus have less to spend on their own R & D.
America was supposed to be a different place where ideas were free and where patents and copyrights were tolerated only in order to encourage more ideas. It’s time we got back to that.
For a useful brief discussion, see “Intellectual-Property Rights and Wrongs” by Joseph E. Stiglitz