There is general consensus that lobbying has been a significant corrupting influence in American politics… As a general rule, lawmakers must vote as a particular interest group wishes them to vote, or risk losing support.
Lobbyists for the Pharmaceutical Industry were major players in the writing of the Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit passed by Congress and signed by President Bush December 8, 2003.
The drug industry, rivals the insurance industry as the top-spending lobbying machine in Washington. It has funneled $1.96 billion into lobbying in the nation's capital since the beginning of 2003 and, in just 2015 and the first half of 2016, has spent the equivalent of $468,108 per member of Congress. The industry also is a major contributor to House and Senate campaigns.
Medicare administrators are prohibited from negotiating prices with the Pharmaceuticals.
A paper released in August by Harvard Medical School researchers cited the size of the program and its lack of government negotiating clout as among the reasons why Americans pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs.
For each of the last 13 years, more than 60 percent of the industry's drug lobbyists have been "revolvers"—that is, lobbyists who previously served in Congress or who worked as congressional aides or in other government jobs.
That raises suspicions that lawmakers and regulators will go easy on the industry to avoid jeopardizing their chances of landing lucrative lobbying work after they leave office.
Probably the most notorious example was the Louisiana Republican Billy Tauzin. He helped shape the Part D legislation while serving as chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
In January 2005, just days after he retired from the House, he became the drug industry's top lobbyist as president of a powerful trade group, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, or PhRMA. He remained in that job—which reportedly paid him $2 million a year—until 2010.
Lawmakers on committees where Part D bills ordinarily go—the Finance Committee in the Senate, and the Energy and Commerce Committee as well as the Ways and Means Committee in the House—tend to be well funded by the drug industry.
Here’s the result of a Congress corrupted by money from big Pharma.
Sick people in the US pay thousands of dollars more for medications than the rest of the developed world and members of congress get the megabucks.
Money talks. Money is speech. Money in politics has corrupted our representatives in government.
