BUSH BOOM (for the drug companies)!

Remember: Democrats want Medicare to be able to negotiate lower prices. The Bush administration doesn't, and the GOP Congress agrees.

For big drug companies, the new Medicare prescription benefit is proving to be a financial windfall larger than even the most optimistic Wall Street analysts had predicted.

... Companies have raised prices on many top-selling medicines by 6 percent or more this year, double the overall inflation rate. In some cases, drug makers have received price increases of as much as 20 percent for medicines that the government was already buying for people covered under the Medicaid program for the indigent....

Drug makers have tried to play down their gains from the program because they do not want to be seen as profiteering in an election year, Mr. Funtleyder said. "You don't want to draw too much attention to how good it's been."

... [Eli] Lilly, the sixth-largest American drug maker, reported two weeks ago that its third-quarter sales had risen 7 percent, to $3.9 billion, and its profits were up 10 percent, to $874 million, compared with 2005. According to Lilly's published review of the quarter, the sales gains resulted almost entirely from Lilly's prices rising 11 percent in the United States, while actually falling in Europe and Japan.

... But Lilly is hardly alone in benefiting. Pfizer, the world's largest drug maker, said its sales soared 14 percent in the United States in the third quarter, while rising only 3 percent internationally. Over all, Pfizer said its profits more than doubled, to $3.4 billion from $1.6 billion....

Pfizer did not disclose how much of the sales growth came from price increases and how much from new prescriptions, but earlier this year Pfizer raised the list prices of some of its biggest drugs by 5.5 percent or more, well above the inflation rate....