E-drug: US drug companies help pay for Bush inauguration
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[Reprinted under the fair use doctrine of international copyright law:
http://bmj.com/cgi/collection/regulation. HH]
BMJ 2001;322:192 (27 January 2001)
News roundup
US drug companies help pay for Bush inauguration
Fred Charatan, Florida
The glitz of President George W Bush�s inauguration ceremony owed a
considerable debt to the US pharmaceutical industry, which paid
$1.7m (GBP1.1m) towards the estimated $17m bill for the occasion.
Its generosity at the crowning moment of President Bush�s journey to
the White House mirrored the substantial support that it gave to the
Texan governor during his election campaign. Over three quarters of
the industry's contributions went to Republicans.
Last November, the non-profit watchdog group Public Citizen
predicted that the prescription drug industry would spend about
$230m during the election. The money would be spent three
ways�on supporting the industry's lobbyists in Congress, on
campaign contributions, and on issue advertisements in print and on
television by Citizens for Better Medicare, a front group for the
industry.
Drug company lobbying for the first half of 2000 reached $42.9m,
according to disclosure reports, said Public Citizen. The leader was
Schering-Plough at $3 880 000.
"Most of that money will go toward protecting the drug industry�s
extraordinary profits and preventing consumers from obtaining
affordable prescriptions," said Public Citizen's president, Joan
Clayton.
The drug industry opposed President Clinton's plan to extend the
Medicare programme so that it partially covered the cost of
prescription drugs for its beneficiaries (BMJ 2000;320;1093). It ran a
series of TV ads at the time, which said, "I don't want big government
in my medicine cabinet."
It also opposed price controls on drugs legislated last year in the state
of Maine. Alan Holmer, president of the Pharmaceutical Research and
Manufacturers of America, condemned the Maine law as "anti-patient,
anti-innovation, anti-business, and we believe unconstitutional." He
said that price controls on drugs would not help those who lack
coverage with prescription drugs, but would harm those waiting for
new cures and treatments for such diseases as Alzheimer's disease,
cancer, and AIDS.
"Americans don�t need a patchwork of state price control approaches,
whose overall effect would be to slow the development of new and
better medicines," Mr Holmer said, "We need national insurance
legislation that would extend insurance coverage to those who lack
it."
During last October�s US Senate debate on reimportation of
prescription drugs the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of
America said, "We strongly oppose the drug reimport bill and urge the
Senate to reject it. For the sake of American patients, senators should
heed the warnings of nearly a dozen former Food and Drug
Administration commissioners who say that reimportation will put
patient health at risk."
For their contributions to President Bush's victory, the drug
manufacturers hope for a halt in moves to regulate the cost of
patented prescription drugs, a vigorous campaign against the
production of generic substitutes abroad, and prohibition of
reimportation of drugs whose purity and efficacy cannot be
guaranteed.
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