Every Woman Noticed That Infuriating Elizabeth Warren/Joe Biden Debate Moment

[highplainsdem]

83. By the time Warren wrote that, she had worked for Dow when they were being

sued by women harmed by their breast implants:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/dow-breast-implant-case-spotlights-elizabeth-warrens-work-helping-big-corporations-navigate-bankruptcies/2019/07/15/06b0d676-82fc-11e9-95a9-e2c830afe24f_story.html



And although she criticized Biden for representing businesses in the state where he was a senator, she did the same thing later, as this 2015 Time magazine article explained:


https://time.com/3695581/elizabeth-warren-medical-device-lobbyists-obamacare/

Warren took to the floor of the Senate on Jan. 29 to unveil a bill she said would act as a kind of multi-million dollar “swear jar” for pharmaceutical companies that break the law, penalizing them when they get caught and using the funds to supplement scientific research. With the folksy delivery that has made her a favorite of progressives across the country, she said that powerful, moneyed lobbyists had opposed the bill, but that her message to them and their big business bosses was, “If they don’t want to put a dollar in the swear jar, then stop swearing.”

What Warren didn’t say was that her bill has a loophole in it for medical device manufacturers. Those companies, which make everything from latex gloves to Magnetic Resonance Imaging machines, would be exempt from her proposed penalties unless they also make drugs. At the same time, her bill explicitly ensures that the so-called “medtech” companies would benefit from the research dollars that her “swear jar” would generate.

Warren is widely seen as the defender of everyday Americans against the scourge of business interests that she says manipulate Washington, rig regulation and fuel corporate welfare. But when it comes to the medical device industry, she sings a different tune, albeit quietly. Since she launched her campaign for the Senate in 2011, Warren has come out in favor several medical device industry priorities, including rewriting Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations, bolstering federal research funding and making permanent certain temporary tax credits for research and development.

Most visibly, she wants to repeal the medical device taxes that help fund President Barack Obama’s signature health reform, the Affordable Care Act. That position has brought her into a surprising, if temporary, alliance on the issue with the new Republican leaders of Congress, who see repeal of the medical device tax as their most likely legislative vehicle to chip away at Obamacare.

All these pro-business positions have not gone unnoticed. “We’ve enjoyed the opportunity to work with Sen. Warren during her tenure in Congress,” says JC Scott, the head of government affairs for the medical device industry’s top lobbyist, AdvaMed. Scott says Warren “certainly has been engaged with a focus on improving the regulatory efficiency” at the Food and Drug Administration, which approves and regulates medical devices, thanks to her position on the agency’s Congressional oversight authority, the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) committee.

In many ways there is nothing extraordinary in Warren’s positions: they are the work of an elected representative ensuring the interests of her constituents. Medical devices are big business in Massachusetts. In 2010, the latest date for which numbers are available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, medical device companies claimed responsibility for more than 23,000 jobs in Massachusetts, 13% of its export economy and $17.6 billion worth of the state’s economy. Warren also represents major academic research institutions that are primary beneficiaries of programs that also benefit the medical device industry. “This is a very powerful industry,” says Paul Thacker, a former medical device and pharmaceutical investigator for the Republican staff of the Senate Finance committee, “And she’s looking out for jobs in her home state.”