Nancy Pelosi To President Obama: "You're Not The Boss of Me!"

Today's New York Times contains a story in which House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Energy And Commerce Committee Chair Henry Waxman make it clear that Congress need not agree to any assurances the White House may have given to pharmaceuticals manufacturers in exchange for their support of the Administration's health care reform plan.

Word leaked out earlier this week that President Obama had assured drugmakers that their downside from any reform effort wouldn't exceed $80 billion over ten years. When Waxman's Committee reported out a bill which would give Medicare the authority to negotiate prices with the industry, the industry's lobbying group forced the White House to admit that it had, indeed, made such a deal with Big Pharma.

Pelosi and Waxman aren't buying it."The minute the drug companies settled for $80 billion, we knew it was $160 billion," Pelosi said. "The President made the deals he made. And maybe we'll be limited by that...But maybe not."

"PhRMA (the drugmakers lobbying group) would like to see if they can get a bargain," Waxman said. "I think that PhRMA should contribute more that PhRMA wants to contribute."

The story also says that Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, who has been an advocate for giving Medicare the right to negotiate, called Jim Messina, the White House Deputy Chief Of Staff on the issue, to get some clarification. He says he was assured that the White House's agreement did not preclude further negotiations with the industry.

It's only sensible to give Medicare, the nation's largest health care "customer," the right to use its purchasing power to negotiate the best deals possible for Medicare recipients. This will be a test of Congressional power and White House credibility.