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April 04, 2007
Big Numbers
Between January 2005 and June 2006, the pharmaceutical industry spent a record $155 million lobbying Congress. During this period they had over 1,000 lobbyists working the Hill and the Bush Administration, blocking efforts to allow Canadian drug reimportation or Medicare bargaining power. And that doesn't even get into the $19 million spent on campaign contributions. Asked about the expenditures, Ken Johnson, vice-president of the Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers of America, said, "Our priority has always been to help advance patient health and ... we have supported policies and programs that bolster patient access to safe and effective medicines." That is so kind of them! $155 million, every last cent of it a selfless donation to improve the health of Americans.
April 4, 2007 | Permalink
Comments
i wonder how many people you could insure for $155 million.
Posted by: Sandals | Apr 4, 2007 11:05:29 AM
I gotta go with you on the big numbers. I don't like it. On the other hand, I understand that every company has the right to do this.....and it does serve a function. There is a balance somwhere and I'm not sure where that is, but the numbers do seem large.
Posted by: Fred Jones | Apr 4, 2007 11:09:00 AM
With the ever-catalytic
Max Baucus stirring the happy mix...
As he holds to be our next Billy Tauzin
Posted by: has_te | Apr 4, 2007 11:35:28 AM
CBS's 60 Minutes sliced and diced this story last Sunday ("The Cost of Corruptin"), with Steve Kroft reprising his sometime-muckraker role.
One fact: The cost for VA patients for Zocor (a cholesterol drug) is $127/yr vs Medicare cost for the same drug of $1,485/yr. Failure to allow government negotiated drug prices in Medicare (as is true for the VA) costs us 10 times as much per patient.
The mental image of two Pharma lobbyists for each Congressperson and Senator makes me wonder if there is any hope for real national healthcare restructuring - and that 1000 drug company lobbyists number doesn't include the insurance industry lobbyists. It is truly obscene. The best (for the corporations) legislation that money can buy.
Posted by: JimPortlandOR | Apr 4, 2007 11:51:26 AM
If the Big Pharma didn't benefit from NIH giveaways, generous interpretation of patents - to say the least - and legislation like Medicare Part D, then we wouldn't really care how many lobbyists they have or how much they spend on them.
Add to all the above the constant whining from Big Pharma and their defenders about how hard and expensive it is to develop new drugs, and they're only setting up their own inevitable backlash.
Posted by: Stephen | Apr 4, 2007 12:27:21 PM
If the Big Pharma didn't benefit from NIH giveaways, generous interpretation of patents - to say the least - and legislation like Medicare Part D, then we wouldn't really care how many lobbyists they have or how much they spend on them.
Isn't this a chicken-egg scenario. Aren't the conditions in government that smile on big pharma a result of said lobbying? Would any industry employ so many lobbyists if they weren't getting results?
Posted by: ken | Apr 4, 2007 12:31:18 PM
Which is why it's heartening to hear how well Obama did in fundraising this past quarter. I'm torn between him and Edwards (leaning toward Edwards), but it's great to see a viable candidate who is not bought and paid for by K Street.
Posted by: Passing Shot | Apr 4, 2007 12:33:20 PM
155 million a record?
didnt they spend like half a BILLION on lobbying for medicare part d? i seem to recall this, though i cant very well place it.
Posted by: rigel | Apr 4, 2007 12:38:47 PM
The last time I heard the number, it took at least $1B to develop a new drug and bring it to market in the US. The nature of this industry requires substantially more R&D investment than the average. In 2001, >$30B was spent on private pharmaceutical research and is probably >$50B/yr today. These investments are, of course, directly related to large ROI potential in this industry. In 2004 for pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing jobs numbered 291,000 and includes many scientist and engineers. This is roughly 1% of the US population.
Given the sustained push to socialize medicine by activists who often employ typical anti-corporation rhetoric, what do you think the consequences of not spending $155M/yr lobbying Congress would be to pharmaceutical industry profits, incentives for R&D investments, and jobs.
Posted by: FoolsMate | Apr 4, 2007 1:04:08 PM
ken,
My point was that if Big Pharma wasn't so coddled by the government yet still trying to portray themselves as altruistic saints, they wouldn't have an image problem with their lobbyists or campaign contributions.
Posted by: Stephen | Apr 4, 2007 3:49:08 PM
Sandals asks: "i wonder how many people you could insure for $155 million."
I'd go with "not a significant number on a national scale."
Posted by: Michael B Sullivan | Apr 4, 2007 4:55:52 PM
Wait until Congress has even more power over the health care system, like with a single payer system. Those lobbying costs will only go up. Hey, they're being rational, aren't they? When you can make money by skewing the law, then that's what you'll do. And if the law has even more influence over who can make money, then more lobbying will go on.
Posted by: Tim Worstall | Apr 5, 2007 6:36:33 AM
I find it interesting that in this thread, the influence of money is regarded as bad, and in other threads discussing the Democrat candidates, the more money they inject into the political process, the better. The posters are cheering them on.
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