Allen West

We all know the facts:  Allen West voted twice to cut $716 billion from Medicare and voted to re-open the prescription drug donut hole - costing seniors thousands more. Now we know why: Allen West is being funded by one million dollars from a drug company executive who shocked the medical community for raising the cost of a single pill from 9 cents to five dollars.  Many patients wouldn’t be able to find a version of the drug they could afford.

Allen West:  Dirty money for him, higher drug costs for you.

Allen West Voted for House Republican Budgets. In 2011 and 2012, West voted for the House Republican budgets. The Miami Herald reported that though Republicans attacked Democrats for cutting Medicare by $700 billion in the Affordable Care Act, “Under the 2011 Ryan plan approved by nearly every House Republican, ObamaCare would have been repealed almost entirely- except when it came to the Medicare reductions in future reimbursement rates to hospitals and drug and insurance companies. So Medicare’s bottom-line spending would have been about the same under ObamaCare or under what some are now calling RyanCare.” The Tampa Bay Times reported that the 2012 Republican budget “would end the help seniors receive toward closing the prescription drug doughnut hole.”[HCR 34, Vote #277, 4/15/11; HCR 112, Vote #151, 3/29/12; Miami Herald, 8/13/12; Tampa Bay Times, 3/31/12]

Treasure Coast Jobs Coalition PAC Funded by Donation from Drug Company Executive.  In its October Quarterly report, the Treasure Coast Jobs Coalition PAC reported a $1 million contribution from Richard Roberts, former chairman of URL Pharmaceutical and current senior advisor to Mutual Pharmacy Company. Since July, the Treasure Coast PAC has spent almost $1.9 million in Florida’s 18^th district supporting West and opposing Patrick Murphy.[Treasure Coast Jobs Coalition October Quarterly Report, filed 10/15/12; FEC, accessed 10/30/12]

URL Pharma Raised Cost of Drug from 9 Cents to Almost $5 Dollars. “As part of a probe into the pricing of newly approved versions of older drugs, a Northeast Philadelphia company has been asked by a group of congressmen to explain why the price of its gout drug is so high. The congressman asked URL Pharma for detailed information about its 2-year-old gout drug as they look into the cost of longtime drugs that never went through the Food and Drug Administration’s review process [...] The elected officials stated in their letter that after the company obtained t he market exclusivity, URL Pharma began charging prices that were 50 times higher than the [previous] price for colchicines- with the price rising from 9 cents per pill to $4.85.” [Philadelphia Business Journal, 6/10/11]

Insured and Uninsured Hit Hard by URL Pharma Price Increase.  “The drug, which has long been used to treat gout, is cheap because, like thousands of prescription drugs, it pre-dates modern drug laws and has never been approved by the Food and Drug Administration [...] In July, Philadelphia-based URL Pharma won FDA approval for a branded version called Colcrys, which sells for about $4.50 a tablet- nearly 50 times the price of the unapproved version. While the uninsured will be hit hardest by the cost increase, even insured patients, like Martin, will face higher costs.” [Kaiser Health News, 12/29/09]