Saturday, March 20, 2010

Big Pharma loves Obama Care

Logo of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufa...Image via Wikipedia

Brian Schwartz
From Tim Carney’s article in the Washington Examiner, Dems tap drug maker millions for PhRMA-friendly bill:

Of all the single-industry lobbies in Washington, the largest is the Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers of America. PhRMA spent $26.2 million on lobbying last year — that’s nearly three times as much as the insurance lobby, America’s Health Insurance Plans, which spent $8.9 million.

If you include individual companies’ lobbying, pharmaceuticals blow away the competition, beating all other industries by 50 percent, according to data at the Center for Responsive Politics.

Given this Big Pharma clout, it’s unsurprising that the bill Obama’s whipping for — Senate bill — has nearly everything the drug companies wanted: prohibiting reimportation of drugs, preserving Medicare’s overpayment for drugs, lengthy exclusivity for biotech drugs, a mandate that states subsidize drugs under Medicaid, hundreds of billions in subsidies for drugs, and more.

Read the whole article: Dems tap drug maker millions for PhRMA-friendly bill.

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