Just one day after the controversial taxpayer-funded political ads touting the President's Medicare bill hit the airwaves, AP reports that the White House gave the $9 million ad contract to National Media, Inc., the Bush-Cheney campaign's media firm. And if that is not shocking enough, the same company that is doing government-funded ads for HHS is also the primary media firm for the drug industry. Specifically, National Media has done the ads for the drug industry front group "Citizens for Better Medicare" – an organization that has spent tens of millions of dollars on ads attacking lawmakers who have fought to lower prescription drug prices. Last year alone, National Media, Inc. raked in more than $8 million from the drug industry to produce ads eviscerating those who had the courage to fight for lower drug prices. The President and his allies in Congress have raked in more than $25 million directly from drug companies and have appointed drug industry lobbyists/executives to key government offices which make health care policy (Eli Lilly's Mitch Daniels was Budget Director, drug industry-attorney Daniel Troy is chief counsel at FDA, and PhRMA VP Ann-Marie Lynch is now a top HHS official). And the new revelations that the White House is siphoning Medicare funds into a media firm directly connected to both the drug industry and the President's personal re-election race is sure to intensify those questions.

A HISTORY OF SHILLING FOR THE DRUG INDUSTRY: The White House's selection of National Media, Inc. was no coincidence: it is well-connected to the drug industry, as well as the Enron/Wal-Mart funded political action committee of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. But its experience with "Citizens for Better Medicare" is where it got the experience in health care advertising the White House was looking for. "Citizens for Better Medicare" is considered the most powerful drug front group in the country. The group "acknowledges that it gets most of its funds from drug manufacturers," and its executive director Tim Ryan was the former marketing director of the drug industry's lobbying arm, PhRMA (for more on CBM's connections, see Public Citizen's report). And the ads the group has run through the President's personal ad firm are widely considered some of the most vicious in politics. In the late 1990s, the group spent millions on ads depicting a senior citizen named "Flo" who preyed on seniors' fears that Congress was going to pass a Medicare prescription drug plan that would put "big government in seniors' medicine cabinet". They aired ads attacking Members of Congress by name for supporting a stronger Medicare prescription drug benefit. They also slandered doctors and pharmacists, saying they wanted to form "greedy" OPEC-style "cartels" to negotiate lower HMO costs and drug prices.

ANOTHER CAMPAIGN TO SCARE SENIORS: Along with the new HHS television ads, the Administration is also devoting taxpayer money to a publicity campaign to stop states and communities from purchasing lower-priced FDA-approved meds from Canada. Specifically, "the FDA started a campaign Wednesday to warn consumers that buying drugs from Canada can be dangerous" despite the fact that the "FDA can't name a single American who's been injured or killed by drugs bought from licensed Canadian pharmacies." The taxpayer-funded PR campaign follows the Administration's successful effort to strip House and Senate-passed provisions out of the Medicare bill that would have given seniors access to lower-priced meds from Canada. Although the project has not reached television, National Media is well-positioned to orchestrate ads on the reimportation issue as well. In 2000, the company aired ads for "Citizens for Better Medicare" attacking lawmakers who want to give seniors access to lower-priced medicines in Canada.