The pharmaceutical lobby refers to the representatives of pharmaceutical drug and biomedicine companies who engage in lobbying in favour of pharmaceutical companies and their products.
Big Pharma spends more on marketing to doctors than consumers. A lot more. And that kind of money can affect and research shows it does affect a doctor’s decisions on which medicines to prescribe. That is, after all, the reason why drug makers spend so much money marketing to doctors.
The largest
pharmaceutical companies and their two trade groups, Pharmaceutical Research
and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) and Biotechnology Innovation Organization,
lobbied on at least 1,600 pieces of legislation between 1998 and 2004.
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According to
the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics, pharmaceutical companies spent
$900 million on lobbying between 1998 and 2005, more than any other industry.
During the same period, they donated $89.9 million to federal candidates and
political parties, giving approximately three times as much to Republicans as
to Democrats. According to the Center for Public Integrity, from January 2005
through June 2006 alone, the pharmaceutical industry spent approximately $182
million on federal lobbying in the United States. In 2005, the industry had
1,274 registered lobbyists in Washington, D.C.
A 2020 study found that, from 1999 to 2018, the pharmaceutical industry and health product industry together spent $4.7 billion lobbying the United States federal government, an average of $233 million per year.
Billions of taxpayer dollars go into the creation and marketing of new drugs. The Los Angeles Times reports that, “Since the 1930s, the National Institutes of Health has invested close to $90017 billion in the basic and applied research that formed both the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors.” Despite taxpayers’ crucial investment, U.S. consumers are increasingly paying more for their prescription drugs.
The high
price of U.S. prescription drugs has been a source of ongoing controversy.
Pharmaceutical companies state that the high costs are the result of pricey
research and development programs. Critics point to the development of drugs
having only small incremental benefit. According to Marcia Angell, former
editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, "The United States
is the only advanced country that permits the pharmaceutical industry to charge
exactly what the market will bear."
pharmaceutical companies receive substantial U.S. government assistance in the form of publicly funded basic research and tax breaks, yet they continue to charge exorbitant prices for medications.
The three
largest shareholders of Pfizer, J&J and Merck are Vanguard, SSGA and
BlackRock, the multi-trillion dollar funds which make investments on behalf of
their clients and keep a cut for their service.
Pharma
companies have become money-making machines and this is evident from the
massive increase in returns they have given to their shareholders in the past
two decades.
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