Healthy Skepticism Library item: 12

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: news

Murray A.
Drug Makers' Paths Of Influence Need To Be Less Hidden
The Wall Street Journal 2003 Nov 11

Full text:

You can’t fault pharmaceuticals companies for spending tens of millions of dollars to influence the federal government. After all, a set of decisions to be made in Washington over the next few days — on drug imports from Canada, modernizing Medicare and adding a prescription-drug benefit to that federal health-care program — will have a profound effect on those companies’ profits for years, and even decades, to come.

But you can fault the companies for being so secretive about it. The drug makers have a right to make their case, but the rest of us have a right to know when and how they are making it. Instead, the companies all too often have operated behind the scenes, writing big and undisclosed checks to groups that will carry their water.

In recent elections, the industry has relied on euphemistically named groups such as Citizens for Better Medicare and the United Seniors Association to run their massive advertising campaigns. More recently, the industry hid behind Rev. Lou Sheldon’s Traditional Values Coalition — “rent-a-god,” as some conservative critics on Capitol Hill call the group — to argue that importation of prescription drugs is really an abortion issue, because it might allow imports of the abortion drug RU-486.

Less well-known are the ties that bind the pharmaceuticals industry to a network of conservative think tanks, both in Washington and in state capitals around the country. The main industry trade group, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, is said to be spending about $2 million this year to fund such organizations, according to informed speculation — although PhRMA officials won’t discuss such funding with the media. Individual companies such as Pfizer and Eli Lilly are seeding the field as well. In October last year, for instance, the State Policy Network, a group that services conservative state think tanks, held a full day of meetings at Eli Lilly’s corporate headquarters in Indianapolis, partially funded with Eli Lilly money.

What do the drug companies get in return for this largess? Well, last month a small think tank called the Galen Institute sponsored a lunch for 75 Senate staffers at which attendees heard from a panel of people opposed to allowing prescription-drug imports from Canada. Grace-Marie Turner, president of the Galen Institute, moderated the discussion. A week later, Ms. Turner was in Chicago, participating in another forum on drug importation, heavily stacked with opponents of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s plan to encourage drug imports.

“This is a huge issue, and has taken up a lot of our time,” Ms. Turner says. She acknowledges that her $500,000-a-year institute gets money from pharmaceuticals companies, but she won’t say how much, explaining, “That’s all very proprietary.” She insists, however, that she doesn’t “take the positions I take because of the people who give us money.”

There is no reason to doubt Ms. Turner’s sincerity; her group has been laboring in the health-care field since 1997. But you have to wonder whether the flood of drug-industry money influences the priorities of groups such as Ms. Turner’s. Some conservatives argue importation is a side issue in the current health-care debate. The bigger issue for conservatives, they say, should be the proposed $400 billion prescription-drug benefit for Medicare, which would mark the largest expansion of the government’s entitlement programs in decades.

The drug companies, however, support the expansion in entitlements, which would provide taxpayer money to buy their products. They vigorously oppose drug importation, which will crimp their profits. “The reimportation issue is distracting a lot of these think tanks, who should be focusing on the more important issue of the prescription-drug benefit,” says John Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis.

The tactics used by the pharmaceuticals makers resemble those honed over the years by the tobacco industry. But the tobacco industry had a product that takes people’s lives; pharmaceuticals save lives. The industry has a great story to tell. So why does it crouch behind others when telling it?

The industry’s tactics also underscore the weakness of the latest campaign-finance “reforms.” These prevent pharmaceuticals companies and others from making unlimited contributions to political parties, but they don’t do anything to stop them from making unlimited contributions to groups such as the United Seniors Association, the Traditional Values Coalition or the Galen Institute. At least when the drug companies were giving big money to the Republican Party, their contributions were publicly reported. Now, the public is left in the dark.

If Congress wants to take another stab at reform, it should force all this out into the open. Anyone who wants to influence legislation — whether it be the pharmaceuticals industry or the Democrats’ newest angel, billionaire financier George Soros — ought to have to disclose the money they are putting into politics. And they ought to be willing to stand behind their message.