ROBERT REICH: How the White House’s Deal With Big Pharma Undermines Democracy. It’s not about democracy. “It’s bad enough when industry lobbyists extract concessions from members of Congress, which happens all the time. But when an industry gets secret concessions out of the White House in return for a promise to lend the industry’s support to a key piece of legislation, we’re in big trouble. That’s called extortion: An industry is using its capacity to threaten or prevent legislation as a means of altering that legislation for its own benefit. And it’s doing so at the highest reaches of our government, in the office of the President.”

I’m pretty sure the extortion is running the other way, but in the end I suppose it doesn’t make a huge difference — except that the pharmaceutical industry’s willingness to sell out on this issue will make some people less willing to defend it on other issues.