PhRMA ads are business as usual

At about the same time Sen. Ted Kennedy asked his Senate colleague Chris Dodd to steer health-care legislation through the Senate in his place, the nation’s biggest lobbyist, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, was airing a TV ad in Connecticut hailing Dodd for “leading the fight to ensure quality, affordable health care for every American†and suggesting you give the senator a call to thank him for the great job he’s doing.

That the drug lobby had nearly the same ad on TV in Nevada and Oregon, praising senators Harry Reid and Ron Wyden for leading the fight to ensure quality, affordable health care, might cause one to question the lobby’s sincerity, not to mention its haste. After all, making health care available for all Americans has been on the agenda of Congress since President Harry Truman proposed it on Nov. 19, 1945, when Dodd was 18 months old. It has been, said Sen. Kennedy in another ad praising the embattled Dodd, the cause of his lifetime. Kennedy is the senator who deserves the congratulatory ads, but he can’t do the drug lobby much good while he’s convalescing in Massachusetts.

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PhRMA, as it is known to its friends, has its reasons for being nice to Democratic leaders at this time. It had been just as nice to Republicans when they controlled Congress and the niceness paid off. The access its members gained through lobbying and generous campaign contributions helped keep anything unpleasant to the pharmaceutical industry from turning up in health-care legislation. This time, PhRMA’s main objective is avoiding price controls on medications.

It certainly has the wherewithal. PhRMA has spent about a billion dollars, more than any other industry, lobbying Congress in the past decade, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. There are more than two PhRMA lobbyists working the Capitol for every member of Congress.

Not surprisingly, the pharmaceutical lobby is pretty good at having its way with health-care legislation. In 2003, an investigation by “60 Minutes†reported its lobbyists wrote much of the infamous Medicare Prescription Drug Bill, which pays for Medicare recipients’ drugs up to about $2,500 a year, then requires them to pay $3,500 out of their own pockets until Medicare payments are restored.

The drug industry was in favor of the prescription bill so long as it didn’t allow Medicare to negotiate lower prices for drugs on behalf of its 41 million clients. Nor did it wish to see the importation of cheaper prescription drugs from Canada and other places. And guess what? The final bill that passed both the House and the Senate and was signed by President Bush prohibited Medicare from negotiating the price of drugs and banned the importation of prescription drugs.

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In the Senate, Dodd voted for the bill before he joined most other Democrats in voting against the final version. But when the new Democratic Congressional majority tried to undo some of the damage and pass legislation that would allow the importation of prescription drugs in 2007, the future leader of the fight to ensure quality health care for all did not vote.

He wasn’t alone. When the drug importation amendment was defeated in May 2007, only presidential candidate Hillary Clinton appeared on the Senate floor to vote for it. The other candidates from the Senate, Dodd, Joe Biden, John McCain and Barack Obama, were absent. Dodd’s people explained he was in “private meetings†when the vote was cast and that he would have voted for the amendment but was told his vote would have had no impact on the measure’s 49-40 defeat.

But, as I noted at the time, one of the bill’s sponsors, Sen. Olympia Snowe, said if Obama, Biden, McCain and Dodd had voted, they might have influenced others to join them. “Maybe, maybe not,†I wrote on this page, “but the four, whose alleged leadership skills have been celebrated in story and song by their followers, could have been on hand to try.†Dick Cheney was there, ready to vote against the amendment if there was a tie to be broken in order to keep prices high for one of the Bush administration’s favorite industries.

Our other senator, Joe Lieberman, was present, but voted against importing drugs, “based on concern for drug safety,†according to his spokesman. The drug industry was claiming terrorists would poison the prescriptions in Montreal or Manitoba before they got across the border and Lieberman bought it. The industry’s $250,000 contribution to his successful re-election campaign the previous year and his wife Hadassah’s job as an industry lobbyist “have absolutely nothing to do with the senator’s position,†the Lieberman spokesman said.

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Now, of course, we also have Dodd’s wife benefitting from her position on several health company boards. But, just like his colleague, Lieberman, that coincidence will have nothing to do with Dodd’s position on health care.

These are the Dodd and Lieberman the Connecticut media have covered over the years: the multi-term senators, who would get elected, disappear for most of their six year terms, only to return to Connecticut and their constituents long enough to run successful re-election campaigns fueled with special interest contributions.

Dick Ahles is a retired journalist from Simsbury. E-mail him at dahles@hotmail.com.