Another reason why President Obama shouldn’t have done this deal with big phrama – they are cheaters:

“The states are the next battle,” said Richard Kirsch, national campaign manager for the liberal advocacy group Health Care for America Now, “and the insurers and health care industry are primed up and ready to go. The industry has enormous power at the state level, and very few states have state-level consumer groups that are able to lobby effectively against them.”

Last year, for example, the drug industry poured more than $20 million into political contributions in states around the country. In California alone, the industry spent an additional $80 million on advertising to beat back a California ballot measure intended to push down drug prices.

Now, speaking on condition of anonymity because the pharmaceutical trade group is officially backing the federal overhaul, industry lobbyists say they are eyeing Congressional proposals that would expand a state’s Medicaid obligations, and are preparing to fight efforts to make some of it up by paying less for drugs. (A spokeswoman for the National Conference of State Legislatures said many states were contemplating just that.)

Time to call big pharma back into the White House and tell them the deal’s off. After that get changes to the health care bill, including reimportation, that big pharma was against. These people have been screwing Americans over for years and they won’t stop now.