State's senators on the wrong side

Connecticut’s senators have been on opposing sides during the debate over health-care reform, but last week, they found themselves on the same side, which happened to be the wrong side.

They voted together on two health-care bill amendments that would allow consumers to buy cheaper prescription drugs imported from Canada and Europe.

The first prescription drug amendment, unlike the health-care bill itself, had considerable bipartisan support, ranging from the socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont to the moderate Republican Olympia Snowe of Maine and the far right Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana. It was introduced by Republican John McCain and Democrat Byron Dorgan.

As The Washington Post reported, the amendment would have helped “millions of Americans who are forced to pay up to 10 times the prices Canadians and Europeans pay for identical medication, often produced in the same facilities by the same manufacturers.â€

The senators from Connecticut voted against it.

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The second amendment was a phony, introduced to provide cover so senators could say they voted for allowing imported prescription drugs. It would have allowed the importation of drugs only if the Food and Drug Administration could confirm their safety. Senators from both parties acknowledged the FDA could do no such thing, so even if it passed, which it didn’t, the amendment would have been meaningless.

The senators from Connecticut voted for it.

“Do not vote for this amendment and say you’ve done something about the price of prescription dugs because constituents will know better,†Sen. Dorgan, the sponsor of the legitimate amendment, warned his colleagues, but 56 of them, including our fine senators, chose to fool their constituents anyway.

The Obama administration opposed the importation of prescription drugs because it would have violated a corrupt bargain the president made with the pharmaceutical industry to oppose not only the importation of drugs but also to allow the federal government to negotiate lower drug prices for Medicare recipients and others. As a senator and presidential candidate, Obama favored both measures.

In return, the industry agreed to cut $80 billion in projected costs to customers over 10 years and support health-care reform, which it did in those ads you saw last summer urging you to ask your congressmen to vote for reform. Eighty billion dollars over 10 sounds impressive, but the Center for Responsive Politics reports that much could be saved in a year or so if people could buy imported drugs.

So when Dorgan and McCain introduced their amendment to allow imports, Obama became belatedly concerned over the safety of “identical medication, often produced in the same facilities by the same manufacturers†and opposed the amendment.

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Dodd’s vote is easy to figure. He was voting with the administration and he also did a favor for the drug industry, a $600,000 donor over the past decade. Lieberman, who also received about $600,000 from the industry in past campaigns, did, as always, what he thought best for Lieberman.

You could excuse Dodd for voting against the amendment allowing drug importation on the grounds he was being a good soldier by honoring the administration’s shabby deal with the pharmaceutical industry. You could also excuse Lieberman if you believed he wanted to honor anything at all. But their vote on the phony amendment designed to fool the home folks cannot be explained or excused.

If, as they say, making a law is like making sausages, the creation of this health-care law demeans the sausage.

Dick Ahles is a retired journalist from Simsbury. E-mail him at dahles@hotmail.com.