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Not the Only Reformer in Town

Although Barack Obama has earmarked health care reform as one of his administration's top priorities for the coming year, the president-elect isn't alone in Washington driving the 2009 health reform steamroller. Congressional Democrats, including veteran health reform advocate Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., have both drafted health care reform

Although Barack Obama has earmarked health care reform as one of his administration's top priorities for the coming year, the president-elect isn't alone in Washington driving the 2009 health reform steamroller.

Congressional Democrats, including veteran health reform advocate Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., have both drafted health care reform legislation of their own, and more bills may well surface on Capitol Hill over the next few months.

The details of Kennedy's plan remain sketchy, but aides to the Massachusetts senator said his proposed legislation will closely parallel the framework laid out by Obama during the campaign.

Baucus, on the other hand, has introduced a somewhat different proposal that appears closer to the ill-fated Clinton administration plan of the 1990s than to the Obama approach.

Among other things, his plan would create a nationwide “Health Insurance Exchange” risk-sharing pool to ensure affordable health insurance to all Americans, and boasts a provision allowing seniors ages 55 to 65 to buy into the Medicare program — a step that could virtually double the Medicare Part D prescription drug program overnight.

At this point, however, organized pharmacy seems to be tilting toward the Obama approach. Late last year, representatives from 10 national pharmacy organizations met with officials from the Obama transition team to discuss a framework for drug coverage under the administration's health reform plan, as well as look at the role that pharmacists will play in the new system.

A potential sore spot for community pharmacy is Obama's plan to allow American consumers to purchase lower-priced prescription drugs from Canadian pharmacies and other foreign sources — a move that has drawn protests from pharmacy leaders in the United States.

According to a spokesman for the incoming president, some pharmaceutical manufacturers are “exploiting” U.S. consumers by “selling the exact same drugs in Europe and Canada but charging Americans a 67% premium.”

Obama's health reform plan would address this problem by allowing “Americans to buy their medicines from other developed countries if the drugs are safe and prices are lower outside the U.S.”

The new administration will also seek to lower the cost of pharmaceuticals by increasing the use of generic drugs in Medicare and Medicaid, and by short-circuiting schemes by brand manufacturers to keep generics off the market.

One industry activity that will definitely be in the Obama crosshairs: the practice by some pharmaceutical companies of paying generic competitors not to bring lower-priced medicines to the market.