Update: Dems killed amendment allowing reimportation of RXs from Canada…John Barrasso (R-WY, M.D.) on Medicare Advantage and TOTUS plans to kill it…

Update: From CQPolitics the real deal on who killed RXs from Canada:

In spite of its overwhelming focus on overhauling the health care system, the administration has been silent on one of Obama’s signature health care promises: allowing consumers to import drugs made in FDA-approved facilities in countries where they are often sold for less.

During the campaign, Obama charged that some drugmakers were exploiting Americans by charging premiums of as much as 67 percent higher than the prices they charge for the same medicines in Europe and Canada.

But Obama’s administration has since cut a deal with the pharmaceutical industry in which drugmakers promised to provide $80 billion in discounts to seniors and the government over 10 years to help pay the cost of a health system overhaul.

Here’s some more of that irony we referred to:

Ironically, Obama’s 2008 presidential opponent, Sen. John McCain , R-Ariz., offered an amendment during debate on a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee health plan that would have written such an importation provision into law. Democrats helped defeat it by a 10-12 vote, arguing that allowing access to the cheaper drugs from abroad was potentially dangerous in light of all the hazards Americans have faced in recent months from risky imported products.

Courtesy of PoliticsNewsPolitics:

…Barrasso, who is also a doctor, also defends Medicare Advantage plans or Medicare HMO’s, and at the same time takes Obama to task for double talk at town halls, telling people they can “keep the plan they have,” yet Obama admits he wants to eliminate Medicare HMO’s. They accomplish a lot of things “that Medicare doesn’t do,” he argues….

Barrasso is pointing out what Team TOTUS knows, there is NO BILL. That was part of their strategy. Daschle wanted his ABC Anything But Clinton method, with no bill so there would be limited time to criticize it. Well they got what they wanted. A mess. No leadership. ABC right neoprogs? STOP THE MEDICARE CUTS!

Every Senior I know is on Medicare Advantage or wants to be. It DOES cover many “ancillary” services not covered by Medicare, you know, vision, that sort of thing…Eliminating the $150m in Advantage will kill the plan. Especially in rural areas which are already without services…it IS a Medicare cut, period.

When we moderates were leading the party, we used to FIGHT MEDICARE CUTS. But silly me, now we are supposed to pat pharma on the back, block Canadian reimportation of RXS and gut Medicare and call that a victory according to the neoprogressives. Insane.

In other news Mike Ross (D-AR) leader of the Blue Dog coalition, the man who caved and let the HR3200 horror out of Waxman’s Energy Cmte, is on the record that he won’t vote for a bill that kills old people. What a maroon. Not sure if he is serious or facetious. He is the nincompoop who let it out of committee with the IMAC language in it and pgs 432 on which have the SHALL consultations, not MAY consultations, SHALL. That is a big difference in the law, ask any constitutional lawyer/community organizer.