The industry has a bipartisan stable of lobbyists who worked on health legislation for influential members of Congress. A longtime aide to former Representative John D. Dingell, Democrat of Michigan, works for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. An aide to former Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, who was the chairman of the Senate health committee, is now a top lobbyist for Merck. The door swings in both directions. For six years, Gary Andres was the Republican staff director of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which is responsible for legislation that affects prescription drugs and the F.D.A. In February 2017, he became a senior executive vice president of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization, a trade group that lobbies for biotech companies. Then he returned last month to Capitol Hill to become the Republican staff director of the Ways and Means Committee, which has jurisdiction over Medicare, including its payments for prescription drugs. Ryan Long, former chief health counsel at the Energy and Commerce Committee, joined BGR Government Affairs in February 2013. In lobbying disclosure reports filed by BGR, he was listed as a lobbyist for Amgen, Celgene, Gilead, Lilly and Merck, among other clients. He returned to the committee this March as the deputy staff director. Retired lawmakers also show up as lobbyists. Among those who are listed as having lobbied for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America in recent years are former Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona and former Representative Bill Paxon of New York, both Republicans. Former Representative Ed Whitfield, Republican of Kentucky, is listed as lobbying for AstraZeneca, Genentech and Johnson & Johnson, among other companies. Whether that firepower will still be effective is an open question. “Nearly every major decision in this administration so far has favored the pharmaceutical industry,” said Ronny Gal, a securities analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company. “But investors are apprehensive about the long-term horizon. Every other country has acted to control drug costs, and the view is that eventually the United States will have to do so.”
Pharmaceutical firms have launched a major lobbying campaign to thwart any serious attempts at lowering prescription drug prices by President Donald Trump. In January’s State of the Union address and in New Hampshire in March, Trump vowed drug prices would drop “very substantially in the not-too-distant future”. He is due to lay out his pricing proposals in a presidential speech later this month. Big Pharma spent $8 million lobbying the federal government in 2017 – more than any other industry, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Spending by the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the main lobby for the industry, rose to $10 million in Q1 of this year, up from $171.5 million over the period in 2017. Pharmaceutical firms may have good reason for concern. During his presidential campaign, Trump seized on positions on drug prices long held by Democrats and opposed by his party and Big Pharma. He said that consumers should be able to import prescription drugs from some countries where brand-name prices were lower than the US and that Medicare bosses should negotiate prices with drug-makers. The public are likely to back Trump, with 80 percent of Americans thinking drug prices are unreasonably high, according to a recent Kaiser Family Foundation survey. Drug-makers have successfully challenged many previous bids to cut the payments they get from Medicare, Medicaid and other government schemes. However, they suffered a major setback in February when Congress made them give bigger discounts to Medicare patients. They are now concerned about the president’s plans to lower drug prices and their fears are worsened by his unpredictability. The Trump administration, like the Obama administration before it, has said it wants to reduce the growth of spending on drugs under Part B of Medicare, which includes cancer drugs. A recent report from the White House Council of Economic Advisers said the existing reimbursement formula of Part B creates “perverse incentives for prescribing higher-priced drugs”. Some of the proposed alternatives to boost competition in this area sparked concern among pharmaceutical firms. Big Pharma blames “middlemen” – such as pharmacy benefit managers and insurers – for the high costs faced by consumers, adding that high-deductible health plans are another culprit. But whether the industry’s long-established lobbying firepower will be effective remains to be seen. Ronny Gal, a securities analyst at Sanford C Bernstein & Company, said: “Every other country has acted to control drug costs, and the view is that eventually the United States will have to do so.”