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September 26, 2009 (LPAC)—The Washington Post and National Public Radio emitted huge sighs of relief Friday morning, that "Obama's Deal with Pharmaceutical Giants Holds," as the Post expressed it. The immediate news these government mouthpieces were so happy about, was that a move by Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) in the Senate Finance Committee, to break up the dirty deal struck against America's senior citizens by President Obama and "Big Pharma," had been narrowly defeated by committee chairman Sen. Max Baucus. Baucus had been in on making the Obama-PHRMA deal, and is the biggest recipient in Congress of campaign donations from the drug giants. The defeat of Nelson's amendment, for the time being, kept an extra $8.5 billion a year in revenues, from the Federal government, in Big Pharma's pockets.

Ever since the Medicare-cutting Baucus "healthcare reform" bill was put into his committee two weeks ago, Washington Post coverage has fastened exultantly on this bill, as proof that despite—and against—the American people's mass uprising since early August to stop this fascist "reform," the "stakeholders" were sticking with it. By this Dracula-like evocation, the newspaper meant the huge health insurance companies, the giant drug companies, the HMOs, the big corporate hospital chains, etc.

Such an alliance of government executive power and corporate finance, against the population, is known as corporatist fascism.

Senator Nelson's amendment was a simple and straightforward way of breaking Obama's corrupt deal with PHRMA, while achieving Obama's ballyhooed public goal, of "bending the curve" of healthcare costs. Five years ago the Bush Administration and Tom DeLay, in pushing through the Medicare pharmaceutical benefit legislation, gratuitously raised the Medicare annual payment to the drug giants, for the medications of 8 million senior citizens who are poor, by about $8.5 billion a year. Nelson would simply take back this bonanza: Go back to the law and the pricing formula before 2005, saving Medicare $86 billion over 10 years, using part of that saving to close the infamous "doughnut hole" in seniors' drug coverage, and another part to reduce the Federal deficit.

On the evening of Sept. 22 in Baucus' committee session, as Democrat after Democrat backed Nelson's amendment, it was openly discussed that this would break the deal "someone made with PHRMA." Interjected Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), "Whadd'ya mean, 'someone'? Everybody knows who made this deal." Everyone does know Obama made this dirty deal, one he swore, during the 2008 campaign, he would never make. In the House, Rep. Henry Waxman had already been slapped down publicly by the White House, for saying he would not be bound by it.

But over 48 hours of pressure, Baucus managed to pull off the defeat of Nelson's amendment, getting a couple of other Democratic big-time recipients of PHRMA campaign cash, Tom Carper of Delaware and Robert Menendez of New Jersey, to vote "no" with him. The press whores sent up phony cheers. Baucus' and Obama's bloodsucking deal was saved—for now.