Billy Tauzin, president of Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, a drug industry trade group, has become the latest casualty in the battle to reform health care; he is resigning. The deal he cooked up last year with the White House looked like a win-win situation: "On Christmas Eve, the bill passed the Senate with the PhRMA deal fully intact," wrote Paul Blumenthal of Huffington Post. Tauzin had promised the White House an $80 billion cost cutting measure from the pharmaceutical industry, while protecting PhRMA's hold on the drug production market.  Blumenthal explained the deal:On August 4, the Los Angeles Times, in an exclusive report, featured quotes from Tauzin claiming that a deal between the White House and PhRMA existed and that, as Tauzin put it, "The White House blessed it." Tom Hamburger wrote in the article, "For his part, Tauzin said he had not only received the White House pledge to forswear Medicare drug price bargaining, but...(Read Full Post)