Major Health Industries spend 1.4 million dollars a day to lobby.....

Looks like it pays big to sit on a health committee....

Quote :: Legislating Under the Influence:
How the Health Care Industry Spends Millions
on Campaign Contributions and Lobbying to Influence Key Lawmakers in
Health Care Reform Fight of 2009
Executive summary
The crisis in health care is undisputed. Costs continue to skyrocket and tens of millions of
Americans are without coverage, leading President Barack Obama to make comprehensive
reform a cornerstone of his campaign message and his domestic agenda.
Yet citizens worry that Congress will fail to adequately reform our health care system. More
precisely, Americans know that the campaign cash and lobbying by wealthy, powerful industries
on Capitol Hill could scuttle real reform, as it has in the past. A recent poll found that 60
percent of voters believe Congress puts the interests of campaign contributors over constituents,
and 79 percent are worried that dependence on large campaign contributions will prevent
Congress from tackling the important issues facing America today.1
A look at the numbers shows that citizens are right to worry. Major health care interests have
spent $1.4 million per day this year lobbying Congress, so you can bet the legislative battle will
not simply rest on the merits of each side’s argument. Health care-related industries wield
tremendous influence in Washington and have sustained an expensive, high-intensity campaign
to protect their own interests. In particular:
· Health industries – including health insurance, pharmaceuticals and health
products, hospitals and HMOs, and health professionals – have contributed about
$373 million in campaign contributions to members of Congress since 2000.
· Political spending by the health industries has increased 73 percent since 2000.
Health interests contributed about $94 million to candidates for Congress in the 2008
election cycle, up from about $54 million in the 2000 cycle.
· Members serving on committees and subcommittees with jurisdiction over health
care reform in the House and Senate received the lion’s share of health industries’
largesse. Committee members raised $178 million from the industries this decade –
roughly half of the industries’ contributions to the entire Congress. Since 2000, the House
members sitting on health committees have raised twice as much money from the health
industry per election cycle as non-committee members (an average of 171,000 compared
3
to 87,000), and the average House member on a key health subcommittee hauled in three
times as much per cycle ($269,000). Senators with plum committee posts also enjoy
sizable fundraising advantages.
· The industries engage in “switch-hitting” – shifting campaign contributions between
Democrats and Republicans to win access with the party in power. In 2000, with
Republicans controlling the House and a closely-divided Senate, Republicans on healthrelated
committees received more than double what Democrats received (68 percent to 32
percent) from the health industries. In 2008, with Democrats controlling both the House
and Senate, over 61 percent of the industries’ contributions to committee members went
to the majority Democrats and just 39 percent went to Republicans.
· The major health interests have spent an average of $1.4 million per day to lobby
Congress so far this year and are on track to spend more than half a billion dollars
by the end 2009. That comes out to about $2,600 per day per member of the House and
Senate. The pharmaceutical lobby alone spent $733,000 per day in the first quarter of
2009. Since 2000, the industries have spent over $3 billion on lobbying, with the total
increasing every year and rising more than 142 percent over the course of the decade. In
each of the past four years health interests have been the number-one lobbying force in
Washington, measured in expenditures, and have averaged over $1 million per day.
· The end of this report lists campaign contributions received by members of Congress
who serve on the five committees with jurisdiction over health care: The House Energy
and Commerce Health Subcommittee, the House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee,
the House Education and Labor Committee and the health committees of the Senate
Finance Committee and the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
With so much health industry money flowing to so many of the most powerful decision-makers
on health care reform in Congress, the American people are justifiably concerned that the health
industries will seek a sizable return on their investment and may defeat meaningful reform once
again.
More broadly, in a political system in which those who are charged with regulating an industry
are so heavily reliant on that industry for campaign contributions, the American people will
likely continue to lose faith that decision makers are able to do what’s best for the entire
American public.
4
“In a week [of taking office] I learned that there were six organs in the human body I had never
heard of, and each one of them had its own Washington lobbyist.”
– Representative Pete Stark, 1985
UNDER THE INFLUENCE?
For decades, the American public has demanded health care reform, and political leaders have
promised it, but little change has come from Congress. While the cost of health care rises
unabated – it will total one-fifth of our nation’s GDP in 20172 - and 86.7 million Americans were
without health insurance coverage at some point in 2007-08 3 - Washington remains stuck in
neutral. The 2008 presidential campaign was filled with promises to finally enact reform to
bring costs down and expand access.
Will 2009 bring meaningful reform?
The Obama administration has made it priority Number One – insisting that a reform bill must
pass by October of this year – but the wild card appears, once again, to be the U.S. Congress.
The health industries – defined here as health insurance, health professionals, health products
and pharmaceuticals, and health institutions – have given incumbent members of Congress over
$373 million in campaign contributions this decade and spent over $3 billion on Washington
lobbying.
The current industry offensive is just one in a series of costly fights against reform waged by
health care interests over the past decade. In 2001, the industry successfully battled the proposed
Patients’ Bill of Rights, securing a much-needed veto threat from President George W. Bush who
insisted that the bill contain “reasonable caps on damage awards,” a top priority of the health
insurers and HMOs.4 The bill died in 2002. In 2003, the Medicare Part D prescription drug bill
blocked Medicare from negotiating lower drug prices from pharmaceutical suppliers. Since the
Medicare Part D battle, Congress has passed expansions of the State Children’s Health Insurance
Program (SCHIP), held regular budget debates that often hinge on Medicaid funding, and –
around 2006 – begun a renewed debate on what universal health coverage would look like in the
United States. In the vast majority of those contests, the industry appeared to win convincing
victories over reformers.
Such a history suggests that reform advocates are right to worry that 2009, the biggest health
care battle since the early 1990s, could play out in similar fashion by virtue of the health
industries’ tremendous financial clout in Washington.

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