You know the path toward any sensible healthcare reform is dead when Pharma’s chief lobbyist is prepared to step down. Former Louisiana congressman and PhRMA head, Billy Tauzin — who brokered a deal with the Obama admin to forge forward Pharma’s role in reform efforts — will be calling it quits in June.

You may be wondering why would one of the industry’s most loquacious and opinionated frontmen who could have shepherded his position as long as he wanted has decided to abandon the post. Perceived pressure. Pressure that was sure to mount against him as a complicit player in reform on the Democrats’ terms. But something funny happened on the way to Obama’s Oval Office desk for signature — the reform bill’s chances took a decidedly different turn with the election of Scott Brown to Teddy Kennedy’s long-held Mass. senate seat.

The White House wantonly negotiated with Tauzin starting January 2009 in part because of the power Pharma could play in either passing or defeating healthcare legislation. Tauzin agreed to support the healthcare overhaul and provide $80 billion in savings to the US Treasury over 10 years. In return, Senate Dems (including the powerful Max Baucus) promised no further government penalties against Pharma.^[1]

With that election, the Dems went from steering the language on reform to reacting to now-potent GOP criticisms and talking ponts on the problems with the reform bill. One of those criticisms of Tauzin by the GOP is that the former lawmaker switched partisan allegiances — far from the antagonism Tauzin and his crew showed Bill Clinton during HillaryCare and his own healthcare reform proposals in the early ’90s.

The combination of “jumping ship” to the Dems and the prospects of a bill that is simply a shell of its former self has Tauzin essentially a wounded leader — fearing retribution and pariah status as steward of PhRMA among a party that hopes to make gains in the 2010 midterms and will make no bones about skewering Pharma’s “ties” to Democrats in the ongoing health reform debate. | LINK

1. This included a pledge to oppose legislation that would allow the government to negotiate prices with drug companies. [↩]

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