Will Obama’s health policy survive a Big Pharma challenge?

President-elect Obama has made it clear he wants to change US health policy, and he appears to have widespread public support to do just that. The pharmaceutical industry, on the other hand, likes things just the way they are. We can expect Big Pharma to put up a fight to protect their interests and, in fact, the first shot will be fired this week. But the pharmas need to walk a fine line. Their public relations efforts over the past few years have been an attempt to win public sympathy. Now they need to attack Obama without jeopardizing all that goodwill.

One change in health policy already singled out by Obama is the federal government’s ability to negotiate Medicare drug prices. This particular item could cost the drug industry as much as $30 billion. Not surprisingly, PhRMA, the largest pharmaceutical lobbying group, has been preparing for this moment and last week announced a new public relations campaign.

“We’re going to do an ad campaign that is designed to make people aware of the importance of preserving your free-market health care system.” This from Ken Johnson, a senior VP at PhRMA, quoted in the Washington Times.

In a post titled “Is big pharma preparing to shoot itself in the foot?”, David Williams had this to say:

[The PhRMA ad campaign] may try to have the same impact as the famous Harry and Louise ads of 1993 that undermined the planned Hillary Clinton-led reform bill. … If that’s really the aim, someone is misjudging the mood of the public. People aren’t looking for “free-market” anything at the moment, especially when what the pharmaceutical industry really means by “free market” is pricing freedom for themselves. … Here’s some friendly advice to the pharmaceutical industry: don’t make the mistake of attacking the policies of our new President. Such a move is likely to backfire.

PhRMA polishes its image

PhRMA hasn’t been sitting on the sidelines during the election campaign, waiting to see who wins. PhRMA’s Johnson also had this to say:

We’ve been moving the pieces on the chess board around for some time now getting ready for next year, and we’ve got a great game plan in place. We think we’ve earned a right at the table, and we’re optimistic that at the end of the day, the majority of members of Congress will recognize the importance of the pharmaceutical industry to health care.

PhRMA may feel it has earned a big chair at the table by its financial support of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) throughout 2007. Just this September PhRMA funded a new group called America’s Agenda: Health Care for Kids and spent $11 million on commercials. PhRMA wins PR points with the public when it advocates for uninsured children. But the strategy is also politically astute. Twenty-eight politicians, only three of them Republican, are explictly thanked in the commercials for their support of SCHIP.

Trudy Lieberman comments on this in the Columbia Journalism Review:

“The SCHIP ads are about good policy,” Johnson told the [Wall Street] Journal. “We are trying to promote programs that encourage greater access to health care.” The drug makers may be building greater access for themselves. As the Journal reported, some legislators thanked in the ads are in critical positions to influence legislation–Maine Sen. Susan Collins and North Dakota Sen. Byron Dorgan, who co-sponsored a bill to import cheaper drugs from Canada, and Montana Sen. Max Baucus, who chairs the Senate Finance Committee that will deal with some of the industry’s key concerns.

Will Montel Williams be the new Harry and Louise?

Now that we know who won the election, it’s time for PhRMA to target Obama’s healthcare policy. The first TV ad in the new public relations campaign runs this week. The initial salvo is very soft sell. It builds on another PR campaign PhRMA has been running, the Partnership for Prescription Assistance (PPA) program. Montel Williams is the PPA spokesperson. Here’s the voiceover for the 30-second spot:

This is Montel Williams. In the last ten years, diabetes has nearly doubled, and chronic diseases like cancer, asthma and heart disease make up 75% of the cost of health care. Early diagnosis and preventative treatment can save lives and lower health care costs. That’s why everyone should have affordable health insurance. Until then, America’s pharmaceutical research companies are commited to helping uninsured and struggling patients through the Partnership for Prescription Assistance. Because doing what’s best for patients is what’s best for everyone.

Montel Williams in front of the Help Is Here bus

Pretty mild. But does that last sentence really make sense? Isn’t everyone a patient? You’re not meant to think too deeply here. You’re meant to identify with the visual images. The ad assumes you’re already familiar with Montel Williams, who travels the country on the “Help is Here” bus. The images include: two women meeting Montel outside the bus (one African-American, the other in a Muslim head scarf), old folks, slightly overweight children with their mom and a school bus, more old folks and African-Americans, an operating room, a mammogram in progress, a doctor with a middle-aged male patient, a family where the Dad tosses a ball into a glove, employees, more shots of Montel and the big yellow bus.

For a moment I thought the bus was rolling past Mt. Rushmore, but when I paused the video, it was just a jagged cliff. Subliminally, though, it was a great shot that added to the warm and fuzzies that the ad attempts to produce: Gee, aren’t those phrmaceutical companies just wonderful?

Well, maybe not.

The Harry and Louise ads, sponsored by the Health Insurance Association of America (HIAA), helped shape public response to the Clinton administration’s health care proposals, first announced in September 1993. The HIAA spent $14 million on their anti-health care reform campaign, which ran from September 1993 to September 1994. How effective was it? Public approval of the plan was close to 60% that October. By July 1994, support had dropped to 37%. Surely those ads had some effect.

The Clinton-era Harry and Lousie campaign helped defeat health care reform by making the government look like the bad guys intent on forcing everyone onto government-managed health insurance. A decade and a half later, what does Big Pharma have in store for the incoming Obama administration? They’ll sure have to do more than complain about their shrinking profit margins, especially in the current economic climate. Stay tuned. This will get interesting.