Big Pharma lobbies against health reform: Big time

Source: Stop Barack Obama

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the pharmaceutical industry spent $1.2 million a day on lobbying during the first quarter of this year. Not surprisingly, the biggest spender has been the largest pharmaceutical lobbying group, PhRMA, which has spent $7 million. Pfizer was a close second at $6 million.
Meanwhile, The Washington Post reports that the largest hospitals, medical groups, and insurers have hired more than 350 lobbyists who are either former government staff members or retired members of Congress. Three out of every four major health-care firms have at least one lobbyist on their payroll who’s been recruited from inside the government. Nearly half of these come from either key Congressional committees that are currently debating health care legislation or from the staff of key lawmakers, such as Senators Max Baucus and Charles Grassley.

According to the Post:

The aim of the lobbying blitz is simple: to minimize the damage to insurers, hospitals and other major sectors while maximizing the potential of up to 46 million uninsured Americans as new customers. Although many firms have vowed to help cut costs, major players such as PhRMA, America’s Health Insurance Plans and others remain opposed to the public-insurance option, a key proposal that President Obama has endorsed.

Senator Baucus’ committee has not yet committed to the idea of a public option.
According to industry lobbyists:

[L]egislative or administration experience helps ensure that policies considered by Congress do not imperil health-care interests, which account for about one-sixth of the U.S. economy.

Exactly. Health care accounts for 16% of GDP. That’s the problem we’re trying to correct, not maintain.

It’s just business as usual

The revolving-door cycle, in which individuals oscillate between careers as lobbyists and government insiders, is widespread. One of the most egregious examples was Billy Tauzin, who became head of PhRMA in 2005, at a salary of $2.5 million a year, after his work in Congress on the Medicare prescription drug plan. That’s the plan that doesn’t allow Medicare to bargain with drug companies for discount prices.
It makes perfect sense to those on the inside:

“Is it a distortion of baseball to hire coaches who have played baseball? Is it a distortion of universities to hire from academia?” Tauzin asked rhetorically. “The bottom line is that people work in the fields in which they have experience. Somehow there are people who think that’s unusual for politics, but I think it’s pretty normal.”

Related posts:
Jack Abramoff and healthcare lobbying
Will Obama’s health policy survive a Big Pharma challenge?