The Power of the Pharmaceutical Lobby in the Federal Government

The Center for Public Integrity, which sponsors investigative journalism for the public interest, just released a report entitled "Pushing Prescriptions" which found that :

Washington's largest lobby, the pharmaceutical industry, racked up another banner year on Capitol Hill in 2007, backed by a record $168 million lobbying effort, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of federal lobbying data. ...

The spending represents a 32 percent jump over 2006. Driven in part by a busy legislative calendar dominated by issues critical to the industry, the effort raised the amount spent by drug interests on federal lobbying in the past decade to more than $1 billion. Pharmaceutical, medical device, and other health product manufacturers, together, spent more than $189 million on lobbying last year, another record and nearly three times the $67 million they spent in 1998, the first full year for which complete records and totals are available.

More than 90 percent of the total was spent by 40 companies and three trade groups: the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the Biotechnology Industry Organization, and the Advanced Medical Technology Association.

This sudden increase in lobby spending from pharmaceutical followed the 2006 Democratic takeover of Congress:

The spending binge last year may have also been fueled by the previous November's Democratic takeover of Congress. After the Democratic sweep of the House of Representatives, several long-standing critics of the industry, such as Representative Henry Waxman of California, assumed leadership roles of powerful committees. Intent on closer oversight of the industry, they conducted a series of hearings on issues such as drug safety, pharmaceutical pricing, and availability of generic medicines. Waxman and some fellow Democrats also tried to give more regulatory power to the Food and Drug Administration and revisit the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act, a law that came into being in 2003 after heavy industry lobbying. The legislation, which resulted in the largest overhaul of Medicare in its history, provides prescription drug coverage through the program.

From then on, they had to hire more Democratic lobbyists to deal with this " difficult political environment."

But the best quote was from an official from PhRMA who said "We don't look at [lobbying] through the prism of Democrats and Republicans. We look at it in terms of those who support free market policies and those who don't." It seems ironic that these lobbyists claim to be supporting "free market policies" when they get the federal government to protect them with favorable legislation that support their bottom line.

Among their most notable legislative accomplishments with all the money pharmaceutical companies spent in the past year include :

• blocking the importation of inexpensive drugs from other countries;
• protecting pharmaceutical patents both within the United States and abroad
  
• ensuring greater market access for pharmaceutical companies in international free trade agreements.
• keeping Congress from limiting advertising aimed directly at the public

To be fair, they did also lobby for the reauthorization and expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP, for five years and expand it to cover an additional 4 million children because, in the words of a pharmaceutical analyst, "More children insured means using more drugs." But overall pharmaceutical companies lobbying efforts managed to keep up the already high costs of medicine.