Serving special interests.

Byline: The Register-Guard

The brilliant Lily Tomlin said, "No matter how cynical you get, it is impossible to keep up." Only Vice President Dick Cheney could have crafted a more succinct characterization of the outrageous influence drug industry and health maintenance organization lobbyists exerted on the flawed Medicare prescription drug legislation Congress passed last year.

Separate reports by the nonpartisan Common Cause and Public Citizen organizations chronicle how a legion of special interest lobbyists spent a combined $141 million in 2003 to ensure that the new drug benefit would primarily benefit private companies. The record number of pharmaceutical, HMO and managed care industry lobbyists - almost 1,000 all told - made sure the language of the new law would expressly prohibit the government from using its bargaining clout to negotiate lower prices and would also ban the reimportation of cheaper drugs from Canada.

Managed care companies threw 222 lobbyists and $32.3 million into a campaign that managed to secure $531.5 billion worth of business over 10 years, according to an analysis by Public Citizen. The wildly successful lobbying effort steered 32 percent of all Medicare beneficiaries into managed care plans over the next decade, up from the current 12 percent.

The muscular Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America, which represents more than 40 brand-name drug companies, hired 136 lobbyists and pungled up more than $16 million for its 2003 campaign. But PhRMA represented just a portion of the drug industry's record $108.6 million handed out by 824 individual lobbyists working the Congress in 2003.

It gets worse. Public Citizen, which has been carefully tracking pharmaceutical industry lobbying since 1997, notes that both the pharmaceutical and managed care industries relied heavily on lobbyists with `revolving door' connections. Forty-five percent of the 431 lobbyists employed by the drug industry or HMOs previously worked for the federal government. Among them were 30 former U.S. senators and representatives - 18 Republicans and 12 Democrats.

The quid pro quo works both ways. Three prominent drug industry and HMO lobbyists have recently moved into senior health policy positions at the Department of Health and Human Services. And just to avoid any awkward introductions between perfect strangers, the lead White House negotiator on the Medicare bill - presidential adviser Doug Badger - previously represented half a dozen drug companies as a lobbyist.

`The revolving door between the White House and K Street has made the Bush administration indistinguishable from the industry,' said Craig Aaron, senior researcher for Public Citizen's Congress Watch and lead author of its report. Washington's K Street, a collection of office buildings a few blocks north of the White House, is home to the heavyweights of national lobbying.

Citizens would be correct to conclude that the Bush administration's highly touted Medicare prescription drug program offers more to private health care interests than it does to senior citizens. The plain truth is that whatever senior citizens got out of the Medicare bill was incidental to the favors a record number of lobbyists bought their respective clients after spending a record amount of money.

Common Cause nailed it in the conclusion to its "Democracy on Drugs" report:

"This report has told a tale of the rush to pass a thinly supported prescription drug bill that was a prime political goal of the administration. In that rush, supporters showed disregard for the law, congressional rules and other procedures and customs. We must reform and strengthen some of those laws and rules and, perhaps more importantly, those public officials must be held accountable."