Fighting for patients' rights

How anyone could read my tirade against big drug companies in the Southeast Missourian and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and conclude that I am in their pockets is beyond me, but a letter to the editor in this paper did just that.

The writer of that letter attacked me with the ludicrous claim that I am bankrolled by the name-brand drug lobby at exactly the same time the name-brand drug lobby was attacking me in another paper for those same comments. In fact, it is not the first time the pharmaceutical industry has targeted me for my votes on issues important to us in Missouri. They have run ads and campaigned against me before. One of the major reasons they dislike me is my vote against final passage of the Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit in 2003. I voted no because the bill didn't do nearly enough to lower drug costs for Americans or enable price-lowering competition in the marketplace. Six years later, I am still on their hit list.

I don't care, because doing right by the patients in Southern Missouri who need access to affordable medicines requires a thick skin. Too many Americans go without the medicines they need -- 80 percent of Americans don't take their medication in its prescribed dosage, according to a recent study -- and high prices are a chief culprit.

I voted against the health "reform" bill passed by Speaker Nancy Pelosi for this very reason, among plenty of others. It is a backroom deal with special interests in Washington, D.C., to protect big drug companies' profits and hold the American people captive to the highest prices for medicine in the world. The name-brand drug industry spends more on advertising and lobbying than on research and development, a statistic that tells us their profits often outrank their patients.

It doesn't have to be this way. With real concessions from big drug companies and more competition in the market, the American people would benefit from changes that would make our medicines more affordable, improve our standard of care, and raise our standard of wellness.

This is a fight I will continue, as I work to remove big pharmaceutical companies' handiwork from health care legislation of any kind. An industry that spends $609,000 every day to lobby Congress will surely fight me back. But I intend to do with hard work and perseverance what they cannot do with minions and misinformation.

Jo Ann Emerson of Cape Girardeau represents the 8th District in the U.S. House of Representatives.