Big Pharma targets Capitol Hill with 2.3 lobbyists for every lawmaker: report

By Jeff Knebel

A new investigative report has revealed the vast lobbying efforts of the pharmaceutical industry to influence health care reform.

Investigations uncovered that, in just the first half of 2009, the pharmaceutical industry spent more than $110 million on its booming lobbying efforts, which includes 2.3 drug lobbyists hovering around Capitol Hill for every member of Congress.

Big Pharma’s efforts to protect their interests in health care reform amounts to a whopping expenditure of $609,000 per day, reported Michael Scherer and Karen Tumulty for Time magazine.

“They’re getting a pretty good return on their investment,” Tumulty told CNN’s John King on Thursday. “It’s not just the lobbyists; the money goes into a lot of things. It finances a lot of so-called research, expert reports and consultant reports.

“A lot of do-good organizations are springing up with names that sound quite like beneficial organizations – but you look at them and it turns out the whole thing is being run by drug companies.”

Tumulty cited a major victory for Big Pharma earlier this year as evidence of the stronghold drug makers have on the Hill, when the House and Senate voted to extend patent protection of biotechnology drugs by an additional 12 tears.

The move, however, was opposed by the Federal Trade Commission, which argued that extending patent protection could hinder innovation and keep drug costs high.

“These bio-tech drugs are miracle drugs, and are probably going to amount to something like half of all new drugs being approved,” Tumulty said. “And the big fight right now is whether there will ever be a generic equivalent for these drugs that cost $20,000, $40,000 or even $200,000 per year to administer.”

It’s virtually impossible to trace all the money being spent in Washington to influence health care reform, Tumulty noted, because “it’s going not only into the campaign coffers of elected officials and salaries of lobbyists, but also into organizations that are essentially front groups for these interests, and into scientific-sounding consultant reports.”

Tumulty also warned that the American public could be the “losers” in all of this. “On some of these key questions you’ve got to say the lobbyists are getting pretty much everything they’re asking for,” she told CNN’s John Roberts. “And considering how important it is to bring down health care costs in the long run, I think the rest of us are the losers.”