Labor & Employment Law

Big Pharma, Big Lies, Big Ad Campaign

By Mike Hall

A Big Pharma front group that battled the new health care reform law with a let?s-scare-the living-daylights-out-of-seniors campaign is using the same tactics in more than a dozen congressional races to try to elect Republicans who have vowed to repeal health care reform.

The innocuous sounding 60 Plus Association has, according to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), spent $5,516,241 on independent campaigning so far this year, with 100 percent benefiting Republican candidates. (Click here for the Washington Post?s race-by-race breakdown.)

The commercials follow the tired formula that House member X or Candidate Y is a demon because he or she voted for passage of health care reform, and reiterate a litany of untruths designed to scare seniors–like cutbacks in care. NOT!

According to the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) the 60 Plus Association, is a

pharmaceutical industry front group, claims it is a ?nonpartisan senior advocacy group,? but it really operates counter to elderly citizens’ best interests. 60 Plus advocates positions on issues that benefit big corporations but that stand to harm seniors? 60 Plus also stakes out positions that explicitly favor the pharmaceutical industry.

The ads are running in Arizona, Florida New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin–the states with the highest percentage of seniors.  With a drug-money-fueled war chest, they are likely to pop up elsewhere. In Pennsylvania, for example, the ad attacks Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D), claiming that Kanjorski’s vote on health care reform legislation threatened Medicare payments to seniors, when, in fact, the new health reform law does not cut Medicare.

The new law actually takes money away from the big corporations who were receiving millions in taxpayer subsidies, and instead puts that money back into the Medicare Trust Fund to strengthen Medicare for current and future retirees. Of course, that doesn?t sit to well with the corporations footing the bills for 60 Plus.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on September 22, 2010 (boomark / email).