Obama's Tax Proposal

Wisconsin taxpayers and health care consumers in Wisconsin may soon be given some relief from ever increasing and exorbitant drug costs. This is so with the President’s recent tax proposal to place a tax on certain “patents and other intangible assets parked in overseas tax heavens by American companies.” This bad news, especially for the pharma industry, immediately follows the now likely demise of the Administration’s health care bill and the quid pro quo agreements between big pharma and Obama Administration.

With the end of health care reform for at least the short term, there exists the distinct possibility at least that along with proposed pharma tax, government Medicare drug negotiations, the importation of much cheaper Canadian drugs, and the closing of off-shore corporate tax havens, are all popular reforms that can now be put back on the table. Presently under the guise of promising increased jobs and a more competitive drug industry, some of the excesses of big pharma may now finally be addressed. Such actions if taken now would also act to significantly, I believe, improve the President’s popularity as we prepare to enter the congressional elections this fall.

If any corporations are in need of reform it is certainly the pharmaceutical industry. In 1980 our government passed the Bayh-Dole Act which gave away the people’s right to the intellectual property created by federally funded research and innovation. Since then intellectual property rights have been given freely, with few enforced constraints, to the inventor and university-based patent custodians who sell licenses to the highest bidders and for the greatest profit.

Presently the Wisconsin taxpayers pay first to create potentially life saving scientific breakthroughs at UW’s life sciences department only to have them snatched up by big pharma which transformed them into the most commercially profitable drug versus choosing one for development with the highest common good or need. Unfortunately in most instances prices are set beyond what many can reasonably pay. This is true not just in third world nations but also for many working Americans right here in Wisconsin.

If there was ever a time for disgruntled Democrats, independents and working class Americans to call or write their congressional representatives and our President, it is now. Tell them that if its now impossible to have universal health care then lets do the next best thing. Reform the financial system, reform individual components of the health care system to the extent possible, including the enforcement provisions of the Bayh-Dole Act, pass the right for the federal government to negotiate Medicare drug costs, pass the importation of cheaper Canadian drugs, and begin to enforce reasonable drug pricing for all.

Benedict is an advocate for state funding of stem cell research and blogs at: danecountyalmanac.blogspot.com.