It’s understandable the drugmakers would want a roll-call accounting of who their friends and enemies are, considering the size of the investment they are making on Capitol Hill: in the first six months of this year alone, drug and biotech companies and their trade associations spent more than $110 million — that’s about $609,000 a day — to influence lawmakers, according to figures compiled by the nonpartisan watchdog group Center for Responsive Politics. The drug industry’s legion of registered lobbyists numbers 1,228, or 2.3 for every member of Congress. And its campaign contributions to current members of Waxman’s committee have totaled $2.6 million over the past three years. (See 10 players in health-care reform.)
The return on that investment has been considerable, both in the House and in the Senate. “We’ve done very well,” says lobbyist Jim Greenwood, a former Republican Congressman from Pennsylvania who was a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee and now heads the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO). “We carried a majority of the Democrats and a majority of the Republicans in each of the committees, and by very clear margins.” — via How Drug-Industry Lobbyists Got Their Way on Health Care – TIME.
Every time I read news stories like this I have to wonder at the audacity of the corporations and Congress in facilitating the buying of American lawmakers and the laws they pass. Is it any wonder that very few of our elected officials ever get convicted of bribery, they have essentially made the act of paying off Congress legal. And to have the Supreme Court decide to hear a case that is all about limits to the amount of money corporations can spend on elections…Limits that make it harder for your Congressman and Senator just another employee of some corporate board in some board room. Just makes the “free speech” of the average American more like a whisper than it ever was before.
And what was the vote about…The one the pharmaceutical companies wanted a roll-call vote on…Whether to extend the monopoly rights of the companies on new “biological” drugs from 5 years to 12 years…It passed. These drugs will not have to compete against generics for over a decade. Way to go Congress…Is there really a “For Sale” sign on each of your doors? These drugs only represent 20% of the current market but are expected to be the predominate in the coming years. The real kicker about these drugs is though…They are extremely expensive. From the srticle…
Biologics average more than 20 times the cost of traditional drugs: treating breast cancer with a year’s worth of the biologic Herceptin can cost $48,000; Remicade, for rheumatoid arthritis, can cost $20,000 annually. For other, rarer diseases, the price of biologic treatments can be as high as $200,000 a year.
What will be the result of these long term protections? Would they protect American’s. Would they lead to more, innovative new drugs? Would they help to lower the healthcare costs? Not according to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). According to them, any protection will cause the industry to tinker with their formulations to ensure further years of exclusivity not innovation. The only thing these long term limits of competition will protect is the profits that allow these firms to buy the very votes that make these protections laws…Come on Congress…Do you wonder that your reputation with the American people is so low?
