Primary These Bastards

After taking massive amounts of money from big Pharma,  Scott Peters (CA), Kurt Schrader (OR), and Kathleen Rice (NY) voted to kill a bill allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices.

Notwithstanding their rhetoric about preserving innovation in pharmaceuticals, it's really about these members of Congress being owned by the pharmaceutical companies and their lobbyists.

Their political careers need to be terminated with extreme prejudice:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s aggressive drug pricing package failed a key committee vote on Wednesday, prompting questions about whether the measure can survive a full House vote.

Reps. Scott Peters (Calif.), Kurt Schrader (Ore.), and Kathleen Rice (N.Y.), all Democrats, followed through on their threats to vote against the provision in the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s markup. Republicans unanimously opposed the measure, too, leading to a tie vote that means the provision failed to advance to a full House vote.

Before the vote, Peters said he opposed the legislation on the grounds that it would stifle future investment in drug development. He cited a Sept. 8 letter in which over 400 biotechnology investors argued that the Democrats’ bill was “draconian” and would “immediately halt funding of drug discovery and development.”

Translation:   We need to allow big Pharma to extort money from society, because otherwise how can we pay 7 figure bonuses and stock options to out CEOs?

………

The vote may not stop House leadership from pushing forward with the bill, however, as a separate panel is also marking up the legislation. House Democrats only have a three-vote margin on the House floor, and the vote attracted the attention of House leadership. The drug pricing provision will “remain a cornerstone of the Build Back Better Act as work continues between the House, Senate and White House on the final bill,” Pelosi spokesperson Henry Connelly said in a statement.

Good.  Make these folks vote against the single most popular policy in America again, and again, and again, and again.

Make them pay the political cost.

………

Social Security Works, an advocacy group that supported Pelosi’s proposal, did not hold back in its criticism of the three moderates.

“It is disgusting when politicians who supported Medicare negotiation in the past switch their votes in exchange for pharma cash,” said executive director Alex Lawson.

Peters accepted a flood of campaign cash from drug makers after co-authoring a letter that criticized Pelosi’s drug pricing plan for being partisan. Rice and Schrader also signed that letter, which was sent in May.

These folks need to be repeatedly named and shamed for their betrayal of the American people. 

Allowing psychopaths like this to continue to thrive in our polity is a mark of profound failure in our society.