Remember how candidate Barack Obama attacked K Street and the culture of lobbyists, special interests and backroom deals?  Within a few months, however, he was sitting with CEOs of pharmaceutical companies to make a deal he thought would help insure the success of health care reform.

Oh, how some decisions can come back to bite you in the ass.  Such was the deal PhRMA, the drug industry’s lobbying group, made when they sat at the ObamaCare negotiation table with President Obama in 2009.

Seeing the opportunity to increase their revenues as more people would be filling prescriptions for their products, they made a deal that tied them to the support of ObamaCare, and to advocate on its behalf.

They couldn’t get to the White House fast enough, and contributed $80 million to promote ObamaCare.  It also provided additional Medicaid discounts.

PhRMA thought that in making the deal they would silence government efforts to bring down drug prices.  However, Obama’s comment in his interview with VOX.com had to shake the drug makers.   “There’s certain areas like drugs, where the fact that Congress –and the Republican Party in particular – has been resistant to letting drug makers and Medicare negotiate for the lowest price,” he said, “it results in us paying a lot more than we should.”

Interestingly, over the past several years, five CEOs of the top six major pharmaceutical companies participating in the ObamaCare negotiations have since resigned or retired, according to the Wall Street Journal.

If ever there was an illustration of what happens when you put aside the principle of the open market to sit at the table of big government, this was it. But let’s not forget the doctors who gratuitously stood with Obama in support of the flawed health insurance plan.