On October 29, Jane wrote a scathing post about what Anna Eshoo’s provision to give biosimilars a route to approval would do, focusing on the 12 years–and probably more–of monopoly it would grant.

The following day–October 30–Eshoo responded.

If you had to choose: four point seven months for your spouse, or four years of college for your child? A monthly bill from the chemotherapy center, or the monthly mortgage?

As someone with recent experience, I can tell you that you would do anything – anything – that held out hope. That the equation of $80,000 for the possibility of 1.2 months would make sense to you.

As Jane Hamsher noted today, Marcy Winograd, the progressive challenger to Jane Harman in CA-36, released a letter savaging Harman for her support of the Eshoo amendment on biologics in the Energy and Commerce Committee. Though Congressman Waxman (D-Santa Monica/West LA) had introduced an amendment for a 5-year fast-track of generic biologics, Harman joined with [...]

Anna Eshoo (D-PhRMA) may be the author of the language granting drug companies endless monopolies on biologic drugs, but she couldn’t have done it without the help of her good friend Jane Harman. A new letter from the Marcy Winograd campaign says: The latest health insurance reform bill includes an amendment, supported by Jane Harman, [...]

I had the best time last week for Halloween. I went to the Senate on behalf of POP with the medical students from AMSA who first alerted me to the problems in Anna Eshoo’s (D-PhRMA) bill, which would grant monopolies on expensive, lifesaving biologic drugs and keep them from ever becoming generics. Eshoo’s bill will [...]

The Republican’s have just released their “alternative” bill to the Democrats’ health care reform legislation. It is frankly a meaningless, very long press release, filled with some really bad ideas. The Republicans did find basically only one section of the Democrats’ reform bill they really liked. In fact, the Republicans thought it was such a [...]

I can’t tell you how happy I am to hear that Rep. Eshoo did not intend to put an evergreening period in her bill. Because not only would it apply to important breast cancer drugs, but also to drugs yet to be developed for everything from Alzheimers to an AIDS vaccine. Thank you, Rep. Eshoo, for your commitment to having a bill that does not allow for “evergreening.”

Now the question becomes — how are we going to get one?

In the Senate, Kay Hagan sponsored an almost identical piece of legislation to Rep. Eshoo’s on biologic drugs, which would keep important lifesaving treatments for breast cancer and other diseases, which can cost $50,000 to $300,000 a year, from every becoming generics. Even if you’ve got an 80% insurance copay, as Sherrod Brown notes, that’s [...]

In her response to my article on her biologics bill, Anna Eshoo vehemently claims it doesn’t allow “evergreening,” which would allow slight tweaks in drug formulas to grant drug companies endless monopolies and keep these lifesaving drugs from ever becoming generics: There is no ‘evergreening’ clause in my legislation. There is in fact an ‘anti-evergreening’ [...]

There was much celebration on Capitol Hill today with the announcement of the new House health care bill. For myself, as a three-time breast cancer survivor, there was tremendous sadness and disappointment in the Speaker. Nancy Pelosi made a choice with regard to the lifesaving biologic drugs I took when I was in chemotherapy-drugs that [...]