Prescription for Power Drug makers' lobbying army ensures their legislative domi

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[sSRI-Research] Prescription for Power Drug makers' lobbying

army ensures their legislative domi

 

 

 

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Prescription for Power

Drug makers' lobbying army ensures their legislative dominance

 

By M. Asif Ismail

 

WASHINGTON, April 28, 2005 †" The deep-pocketed pharmaceutical and health

products industry has lobbied on more than 1,400 congressional bills since

1998 and spent a whopping $759 million during that period, a Center for

Public Integrity review of lobbying records revealed. Drug companies and

manufacturers of health products have used more professional lobbyists in

the last six and a half years†" almost 3,000†" than any other organized

interest, the analysis also found. In comparison, the insurance industry,

second-largest in terms of spending, spent $644 million in the same period

and employed just over 2,000 lobbyists.

 

In recent years, the pharmaceutical industry has scored a series of

legislative victories on Capitol Hill, which could potentially translate

into tens of billions of dollars of additional revenue to drug companies

annually. The federal government will buy drugs worth at least $40 billion

from the companies every year once the Medicare Prescription Drug,

Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003 goes into effect next year. In

addition, critics have accused the industry of having undue influence over

the Food and Drug Administration, the agency that regulates pharmaceutical

interests.

 

For every member of Congress in office since '98, there were four and

a half

pharmaceutical industry lobbyists.

 

Industry-watchers say the drug companies' recent successes in Congress and

with the FDA show how effective their lobbying campaign is. " The

[lobbying]

money is very well-spent, " said Dr. Jerry Avorn, author of Powerful

Medicines: The Benefits, Risks, and Costs of Prescription Drugs. " The fact

that we are the only country in the industrialized world that does not

have

any provision for negotiating drug prices, the fact that we are

spending far

more per capita on drugs than any other country and the fact that when

legislation is written it often seems to be exactly the kind of

legislation

that benefits the pharmaceutical industry [shows] they are getting their

money's worth. "

 

Find out more about the pharmaceutical and health products industry's

lobbying

 

In 2003, the year that the legislation passed allowing prescription drug

coverage through Medicare, 298 pharmaceutical and health industry groups

spent $143 million lobbying the federal government. They employed 1,274

professional lobbyists.

 

The passage of the new Medicare law had been an industry priority for many

years. No wonder: The 415-page legislation contains several windfalls for

drug companies, including a controversial provision that prohibits the

federal government from negotiating with companies on drug prices.

 

The industry has also mounted campaigns to weaken federal regulation,

strengthen patent protections, extend patents, win tax credits and get the

federal machinery to protect its interests abroad, among other issues.

 

Other big wins on Capitol Hill include the extension of the Prescription

Drug User Fee Act through September 2007, authorizing the FDA to continue

collecting industry money to process drug approval applications. The FDA

expects to take in more than $284 million in user fees this year

alone. The

user fee has helped FDA to hire more than 1,200 new employees†" and

thereby to

reduce drug approval time. But many observers, such as Avorn and Thomas

Moore, a fellow at George Washington University's Center for Health

Services

Research and Policy and author of Prescription for Disaster, a book on

drug

safety, oppose the arrangement because that money gives the industry

greater

leverage. The user fee act implies that the main mission of the FDA is to

facilitate speedy approval of drug, Avorn said. He added that the

legislation and the agency's " shrinking capacity to follow post-marketing

safety problems, all together suggest that the needs of the industry have

loomed larger at FDA than public health mission. "

 

" The User Fee Act has left the pharmaceutical industry paying a very

significant share of FDA's total budget, " Moore said. " Each

reauthorization

is sort of another step to come to the bargaining table, if you will,

to see

if they can obtain some additional benefits. "

 

Many critics also argue that by making the FDA dependent on the

industry, it

also opens the doors for a culture of conflict-of-interest to thrive.

 

In 2002, the industry also succeeded in getting the Best

Pharmaceuticals for

Children Act passed. The law encourages companies to test drugs in kids by

extending patents for six months.

 

Drug interests have also successfully blocked a number of bills that would

have affected its bottom line, among them, legislative efforts to control

drug prices, legalizing drug importation, closing loopholes in patent laws

etc.

Former government insiders

 

Leading the industry's lobbying efforts was the trade group Pharmaceutical

Research and Manufacturers of America, the seventh largest lobbying

organization in the country. PhRMA alone spent almost $93 million on

lobbying in the last six and a half years.

 

Besides its 38 in-house lobbyists, PhRMA employed 160 lobbyists in

2003-2004. Since 1998, the organization used 64 different firms to

lobby 35

federal agencies on 38 issues separately identified under the Lobbying

Disclosure Act of 1995.

 

The Biotechnology Industry Organization, a trade organization that

represents biotech and biomedicine companies, spent more than $27 million

since '98.

 

The Center analysis revealed the extent to which the industry used former

government insiders to influence the federal government. Of the nearly

3,000

professionals who lobbied for the industry, 805 were former federal

officials, including more than 50 former members from the House and a

dozen

from the Senate.

 

Both PhRMA and BIO are headed by former members of Congress. PhRMA's

president is former Rep. Billy Tauzin (R-La.), who chaired the House

energy

and commerce committee until last year and was one of the co-sponsors

of the

Medicare legislation. The House Energy and Commerce Committee's

jurisdiction

includes the drug industry. Tauzin's former colleague on the committee,

James Greenwood (R-Pa.) heads BIO. The former Pennsylvania

congressman, who

sponsored or backed numerous bills favorable to the industry,

including the

Best Pharmaceuticals for Children Act of 2002, joined BIO last July under

controversial circumstances. As chairman of the Energy and Commerce

Committee's Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigation, just before he

accepted the position he was scheduled to hear testimony on possible links

between antidepressant use and suicide among children. Because of the

conflict of interest, he cancelled the hearing.

 

Both Tauzin and Greenwood have not yet registered to lobby†" both recently

retired congressmen have to wait for at least a year before they can

legally

lobby their colleagues. But the industry has employed at least 48 former

members of the U.S. House of Representatives and 15 ex-senators to lobby.

 

That includes Sens. Bob Dole (R-Kan.), Birch Bayh (D-Ind.), Lloyd Bentsen

(D-Texas), Dennis Deconcini (D-Ariz.), Steve Symms (R-Idaho), Tim

Hutchinson

(R-Ark.) and Howard Baker (R-Tenn.) and Reps. Bob Livingston (R-La.), Bill

Paxon (R-N.Y.) and James Blanchard (D-Mich.). Dole and Bayh are the

authors

of the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, which gave the drug industry greater

access to

government-funded research.

The Center's findings didn't surprise the industry's longtime critics.

Rep.

Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who has introduced several measures in Congress to

regulate drug companies, says that the pharmaceutical industry has the

most

powerful lobby in Washington, D.C.. " Uniquely in the industrialized world,

our government does not regulate the pharmaceutical industry†" rather the

pharmaceutical industry regulates the government, which is why

Americans pay

by far the highest prices in the world for medicines they need, " he

told the

Center.

 

 

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