AMGEN LOBBYING PAYS OFF; MEDICARE EXPANDS EPOGEN ELIGIBILITY.

Byline: Paul Heldman Bloomberg News

The Clinton administration decision last week to ease Medicare payment restrictions for Amgen Inc.'s Epogen shows how a stable of lobbyists and a persuasive argument can prompt a government bureaucracy to reverse course.

The Thousand Oaks-based biotechnology company relies on the government for half its revenue and spent $1.6 million in 1996 alone on lobbying for its financial interests in the nation's capital.

``They have a lot to protect,'' said Ira Loss, health care industry analyst at HSBC Washington Analysis.

The lobbying paid off for Amgen last week, when the government confirmed a change in rules that will expand the number of patients eligible for Medicare coverage for Epogen. In reaction, Amgen shares jumped as much as 10 percent last week. In Monday's trading, the company's shares rose by 1 3/16 to 59-5/8.

The stakes for the company are high. Epogen, used to treat anemia in patients with kidney failure, generated $1.16 billion in revenue for Amgen last year - nearly half the company's total revenue. Epogen revenues come mainly from Medicare, the government health insurance program for the elderly and disabled, the company says.

The rule change reversed a Clinton administration decision in September to tighten the guidelines for Medicare reimbursement. Company officials blamed the September decision for holding Amgen's fourth-quarter earnings growth to 1 percent and predicted it would continue to hurt earnings in the current quarter.

Amgen spent $1.6 million on lobbying in 1996, including $400,000 paid to outside lobbyists, according to lobbying disclosure reports on file in Congress. The company has not submitted year-end lobbying records for 1997 yet, but the available records show spending at about the same pace as in 1996.

Amgen paid for lobbying by such prominent figures as former Republican National Committee Chairman Haley Barbour and Peter Teeley, a former capital press secretary. Former President George Bush used Teeley as his press secretary when Bush was vice president.

Perhaps Amgen's best advocate on the Epogen issue is Lynda Nersesian, a paid Amgen lobbyist who also has cancer and uses the drug. ``When I don't get EPO, I can hardly get out of bed,'' said Nersesian, president of the Columbia Consulting Group, which Amgen paid $120,000 last year.

Nersesian, who is not a Medicare patient, said she appealed to Sen. Arlen Specter, who chairs the subcommittee that funds the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which runs Medicare. Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, played a key role in the change in Medicare policy on Epogen.

Amgen's political action committee contributed $1,000 to Specter's 1998 re-election campaign, records show.

All told, the company and employees contributed more than $240,000 to candidates and political parties during the 1995-1996 election cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Amgen's political action committee alone contributed $8,500 to candidates during the 1997-1998 election cycle, records show.

Specter also heard from fellow lawmakers. The day before Medicare chief Nancy-Ann Min DeParle was scheduled to appear before the subcommittee, Specter received a letter from House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Archer, a Texas Republican, urging Specter on in his quest to press DeParle on the issue.

``We thought you might be interested to learn that nearly two dozen members of the House have expressed their concerns to Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala and to Mrs. DeParle,'' Archer wrote in a letter also signed by Republican Rep. Bill Thomas and Democratic Rep. Fortney ``Pete'' Stark, both of California. Thomas chairs the Ways and Means health subcommittee that oversees Medicare, and Stark is the panel's top Democrat.

The lobbying campaign climaxed with DeParle's appearance at a hearing chaired by Specter last week. Under questioning, DeParle, who won Senate approval to become Medicare's chief administrator in November, said the program would be easing reimbursement guidelines immediately.

Specter says he wasn't lobbied by Amgen. ``No company came to me,'' he said. ``There have been a lot of complaints . . . from people who have been suffering.''