You may have noticed that Harry and Louise are back and that they've switched sides. Thanks to my good buddy Tom Hamburger of the L.A. Times, we now know a bit more about why: Because the Obama Administration bought the support of Big Pharma.

The journey of the Obama health care plan (I'm going to try not to call it "reform" until we know what's really in it) through the legislative process is maddeningly complicated and someday (maybe) we'll find out all the deals that have been cut. But thanks to Hamburger's piece, at least one of them is fairly clear:

The pharmaceutical industry, which was an important part of the big business coalition that helped defeat the Clinton health care plan in 1993-94, is backing the Obama initiative, after the administration promised that it would not mess with two provisions that are very important to Big Pharma: the federal government will not seek the power to negotiate the price of drugs provided to seniors under the Medicare (Part D) drug benefit, and the federal government will not legalize the reimportation of drugs from Canada and other foreign markets where the very American-made drugs sell for less than they do in the U.S.

These happen to be two changes that Obama favored as a candidate, and were likewise favored by pretty much every Democratic candidate over the last two or three election cycles. The ban on negotiating drug prices for Medicare recipients was universally (and accurately, says me) portrayed by Dems as a Bush Administration giveaway that added billions to the cost of the Medicare drug benefit. LIkewise, reimportation was used to highlight the outrageous fact that the drug companies charge us more for their drugs than they charge foreign consumers.

Back to Harry and Louise, in case that reference was a tad obscure. In 1993, the business coalition that defeated Clinton Care aired a series of powerful ads featuring actors Harry and Louise as average Americans who feared that their health care would be destroyed by the Clinton plan.

This year, someone had the clever idea of hiring the same two actors to do an ad in favor of Obama's health plan. It's been running for weeks. And, ironically, one of the chief sponsors of the ad is the pharmaceutical industry.

Should we be outraged by the price Obama has paid to get big Pharma onto their team? Minnesota's own Larry Jacobs is quoted in Hamburger's story saying no. Here's his quote:

"Yes, the drug companies are getting tremendous sweetheart deals" from Obama, said Lawrence Jacobs, a University of Minnesota political scientist who studies the history of health reform and other major social and economic changes. "But these bargains are the price of admission for achieving substantial reform."

He's probably right, if it turns out that the sausage that comes out at the end does more good than harm. One lesson Obamanians took from the Clinton experience is that they won't pass anything at all if big business is united against them. So they've been making these devil deals. At what point is the price too high?