Obama Health Care: Taking on Big Pharma

"Taking on Big Pharma

Paul Jay continues his conversation with Roger Hickey of the Campaign for America's Future at the Tides Foundation's Momentum conference in San Francisco. The first segment of this interview was done before President Obama's speech about his health care reform. Now, after the speech, they speak about what the president said and the feasibility of the health reform taking on the Single Payer system which would allow for everyone to be covered. They also speak about President Obama's centrism, and that his collaboration with major pharmaceutical companies, also known as Big Pharma. Hickey says that questions about the functioning of the drug and insurance industries and the deal President Obama invariably agreed to with Big Pharma, "are now politicized questions in the United States of America, while a few years ago they were not. Whether or not we get a good bill, and I think we will, that would be only the beginning of the process of getting public power countervailing and regulating and cutting back the private power of those insurance and drug industries that control our lives."

Bio
Roger Hickey is co-director of the Campaign for America's Future, an organization launched by 100 prominent Americans to expand the national debate about America's economic future. The Campaign seeks to empower working Americans, middle-class families, and the poor to make their voices heard in support of a populist economic agenda and an expansion of democracy. Recently, Hickey organized and helped to lead a national coalition of citizen leaders known as Americans United to Protect Social Security."

With thanks to the The Real News Network and the Tides Foundation.