Drug Lobby Second to None
Pfizer,
the largest pharmaceutical company, grossed $51 billion in sales,
netting over $11 billion in profit! Once the Medicare Prescription Drug
Benefit goes into effect next year, drug makers will receive billions
more in increased profits.
The cost of prescription drugs are so far out of reach, it's a wonder
anyone is able to utilize them. Case in point, just one of my arthritis
drugs costs approximately $4,000 a month! Who on earth can afford that?
Fortunately for me, I was chosen to participate in the Medicare Drug
Replacement Program which provides this drug to me for only $5. But I
am one in only 30,000 people in the nation who was chosen to
participate. I believe you must be falling apart at the seams in order
to qualify for such a program. Many of the “state of the art” drugs
most often recommended for treatment were denied me simply because the
costs were so out of reach. Consequently, 12 years of debilitation
ensued with little hope for improvement. How do you put a dollar amount
on a person's quality of life? How MORAL is that?
By M. Asif Ismail
WASHINGTON
DC — The pharmaceutical and health products industry has spent more
than $800 million in federal lobbying and campaign donations at the
federal and state levels in the past seven years, a Center for Public
Integrity investigation has found. Its lobbying operation, on which it
reports spending more than $675 million, is the biggest in the nation.
No other industry has spent more money to sway public policy in that
period. Its combined political outlays on lobbying and campaign
contributions is topped only by the insurance industry.
The drug
industry's huge investments in Washington — though meager compared to the
profits they make — have paid off handsomely, resulting in a series of
favorable laws on Capitol Hill and tens of billions of dollars in
additional profits. They have also fended off measures aimed at
containing prices, like allowing importation of medicines from
countries that cap prescription drug prices, which would have dented
their profit margins. Pfizer, the world's largest drug company, made a profit of $11.3 billion last year, out of sales of $51 billion.
The
industry's multi-faceted influence campaign has also led to a more
industry-friendly regulatory policy at the Food and Drug
Administration, the agency that approves its products for sale and most
directly oversees drug makers.
Most of
the industry's political spending paid for federal lobbying. Medicine
makers hired about 3,000 lobbyists, more than a third of them former
federal officials, to advance their interests before the House, the
Senate, the FDA, the Department of Health and Human Services, and other
executive branch offices.
In 2003
alone, the industry spent nearly $116 million lobbying the government.
That was the year that Congress passed, and President George W. Bush
signed, the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003, which created a
taxpayer-funded prescription drug benefit for senior citizens.
That
figure was not anomalous. In 2004, drug makers upped their reported
expenditures on lobbyists to $123 million, a record amount for the
industry. Of the 1,291 lobbyists who were listed that year as
representing pharmaceutical corporations and their trade groups, some
52 percent were former federal officials.
By
adding the benefit to Medicare, the government program that provides
health insurance to some 41 million people, the industry found a
reliable purchaser for its products. Thanks to a provision in the law
for which the industry lobbied, government programs like Medicare are
barred from negotiating with companies for lower prices.
Critics
charge that the prescription drug benefit will transfer wealth from
taxpayers, who provide the funding for Medicare, to pharmaceutical
firms. According to a study done in October 2003 by Boston University
professors Alan Sager and Deborah Socolar, 61
percent of Medicare money spent on prescription drugs will become
profit for drug companies. Drug-makers will receive $139 billion in
increased profits over eight years, the study predicts. The Medicare prescription drug benefit starts in 2006.
(To read the entire article, click here.)
Blog For Iowa 