Healthy Skepticism Library item: 4393

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

Mondics C.
Drugmakers benefiting from improved political climate
Knight Ridder Newspapers 2006 Apr 17
http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/news/politics/14360884.htm

Notes:

Ralph Faggotter’s Comments:

It’s much more cost effective to search for compliant Congressman than for a cancer cure.

Full text:

Drugmakers benefiting from improved political climate
BY CHRIS MONDICS
Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON – After years of pumping millions of dollars into election campaigns, the pharmaceutical industry is reaping the benefits of a vastly improved political climate on Capitol Hill.

The increases in donations have moderated since the last decade as the industry has won passage of long-cherished legislative objectives, or fended off challenges that it deemed a threat to its way of doing business.

In the last year, drug companies have won protection from lawsuits involving production of a pandemic flu vaccine. They have been invited to join President Bush in mapping government strategy to fight a pandemic, and have been sought out to assist in producing vaccines against flu and bioterrorism.

At the same time, legislative measures aimed at the industry – notably, bills that would permit importing cheaper prescription drugs from abroad – appear stalled, with little likelihood they will come up soon.

“It is true, they don’t face the same threat,” said Jennifer Duffy, editor of the Cook Political Report and a follower of trends on Capitol Hill. “All industries go through cycles.”

Industry spending dropped to $18 million in the 2004 election cycle from $29 million in 2002, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks campaign spending.

Current spending appears to be on the same track, the center said, with $6 million in hand about seven months from Election Day.

Billy Tauzin, president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the drugmakers’ lobbying arm, said one reason for the decline was passage of the Medicare prescription-drug plan in 2003, an important legislative hurdle.

The measure was a major victory for the industry, not only because it committed the government to spending an average of $67 billion a year over 10 years on their products but also because proposals requiring the government to negotiate for the lowest price were defeated. Drugmakers feared that provision would have cut deeply into profits and opened the door to price controls on other drug spending.

Also in 2003, the industry headed off a strong push to allow importation of cheaper prescription drugs from abroad. The House passed the measure, but it died in the Senate.

“A few years ago, this industry was under extraordinary assault,” said Tauzin, who was in Congress at the time the Medicare drug benefit passed and who helped write the legislation. But “Medicare Part D has been passed, and we have turned this thing around.”

Analysts like Duffy say the climate could easily change again as the election nears and politicians seek to tap into public distrust of the industry by pushing for price controls and other measures to blunt the cost of medicine. And if Republicans lost control of one or both houses of Congress in November, the climate might become much more hostile for the industry.

Sen. David Vitter, R-La., a leading advocate for importing cheaper prescription drugs from abroad, said there is as much support in Congress for controlling drug costs as ever. He said he expects to seek enactment this year of a bill allowing imported drugs, and estimated there are 60 votes in favor. “I don’t think interest or support has waned,” he said.

The Senate passed legislation recently allowing the government to negotiate prices for individual health-care plans providing the prescription benefit. But analysts see that bill as having limited impact.

For now, at least, a unique confluence of events appears to be playing in the industry’s favor.

The steady rise in prescription-drug prices has slowed from annual increases as high as 17 percent during the 1990s to 8.2 percent in 2004, the lowest rate of increase in 24 years, according to the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

And for all the controversy and discontent surrounding its inception, the government’s prescription benefit is beginning to win favorable commentary from seniors. Tauzin and Vitter say many seniors are pleased with the program, which cuts out-of-pocket costs for many.

At the same time, other political issues may have eclipsed prescription costs. Vitter and others note that the war in Iraq is a major preoccupation of voters, absorbing some of the attention that had been focused on drugmakers. The federal government, meanwhile, has taken some flak for early problems implementing the drug benefit, drawing some of the heat away from drugmakers.

“One of the things we have seen over the past several years” is that the target of political criticism changes, said Bill Pierce, a public relations executive and former spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services. “At one point, it was the doctors, and then it was the HMOs.”

Add to that the impact of the Medicare drug benefit on some seniors, Pierce said, and the result is an improving political climate for drugmakers.

“Many millions now have a benefit who didn’t have one before,” he said.