Want to Keep Expensive and Dangerous Drugs on the Market? Throw Money at Congress.
The Center for Public Integrity, a consumer protection watchdog in Washington D.C., released some disturbing numbers about drug lobbyists. Since 1998, the pharmaceutical and health products industry lobbied on more than 1,400 congressional bills, spent $759 million in lobbying efforts, and employed almost 3,000 professional lobbyists. This is more money and resources spent lobbying than any other organized interest.
One of the most disturbing results of these payoffs is the recent Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernizatin Act of 2003 which goes into effect next year. Buried deep in this Act is...
a provision which forbids the U.S. government from negotiating drug prices with companies. As Dr. Jerry Avorn, author of Powerful Medicines: The Benefits, Risks, and Costs of Prescription Drugs, states:
We are the only country in the industrialized world that does not have any provision for negotiating drug prices, the fact that we are spending far more per capita on drugs than any other country and the fact that when legislation is written it often seems to be exactly the kind of legislation that benefits the pharmaceutical industry [shows] they are getting their money's worth.
See related article here and here.