Got health care?

Livid Republicans decried the fact that they were ‘locked out’ of the process. Frankly, the way they were foaming at the mouth and riling up the Tea Party masses throughout this debate, I don’t blame Democrats for dead- bolting the door. This whole thing was ugly.

A recent headline caught my eye. A bastion of brazen bandits broke into an Eli Lilly warehouse in Connecticut last month and made off with dozens of wooden crates of prescription pills. Prozac. Cymbalta. (You know, the drugs that can either cure your depression, or inflict raging diarrhea.) The value of the drugs? $75 million. Eli Lilly flacks said the heist would not disrupt their supply chain. And experts surmise that any impact on the company’s financials would be immaterial, given their $21.8 billion in sales last year.

Pharmaceutical companies generally get a bad rap. I am not hopping on the bandwagon. I know they spend billions on research and development before those Flintstone vitamins can legally hit the shelves. But … a few guys wander into a minimally secured warehouse, browse about unnoticed for a few hours, and make off with $75 million in prescription drugs? And, it appears, the loss is but a blip on Eli Lilly’s financial radar? At a time when seniors are choosing between buying the prescription drugs they need to survive and putting food on the table, this tale is more than a little unsettling.

At the end of the day, I hope this health care reform thing works out. Really. We all should. Seems foolish to root for abject failure. If the ship sinks, we all go down.

Life jackets aren’t labeled Republican and Democrat.

Ben Clarke has worked in Washington, D.C. as a political consultant and speechwriter for the past ten years. During that period, he has served as chief political writer for GOP strategist Frank Luntz, speechwriter for Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, and communications consultant for Rudy Giuliani’s 2008 presidential campaign. He has worked on countless House, Senate and Gubernatorial campaigns across America. He has also worked on or covered campaigns in Ukraine, Georgia and Greece. He recently relocated to the Berkshires in Massachusetts, where he works as a freelance writer.