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Lessons from Jon Barron
Drug Company Money & Your Health Care
In this week's excerpt from Lessons from the Miracle Doctors, Jon Barron reveals some of the ways drug company money influences the health care you receive.
"By their very nature, prescription drugs are the perfect product for a monopoly. Drugs are patented and available from only one manufacturer for a number of years, and prices can be increased at the discretion of the company with few consumer complaints. How many people who are terminally ill question the cost of drugs prescribed by their doctor, particularly when it's paid for by health insurance? During the 1980s, inflation rose 58 percent, and yet pharmaceutical companies managed to triple their prices. In 2001, as the economy reeled and corporate profits sank for the average Fortune 500 company, drug companies in the top 500 list saw their profits soar by 33 percent over the previous year. Quite simply, the drug industry is one of the most profitable industries in world, with annual profits of 18.9 percent—more than five times the average Fortune 500 company. In 2000, worldwide sales reached an astronomical $365 billion. The nine largest pharmaceutical giants netted $30.6 billion in 2001 profits.
Drug companies now spend, on average, over twice as much on advertising as on research. And since 1997 the industry has spent nearly $478 million lobbying the federal government. Also, during that same period, the top twenty-five pharmaceutical companies and trade groups contributed $48.6 million to federal election campaigns. Well over $100 million more went to pay for issue ads, hiring academics, funding nonprofits, and other activities to promote the industry's agenda in Washington. All told, the drug industry has spent nearly $650 million on political influence in the last six years.
And has all this lobbying had any impact? You be the judge: U.S. regulators have sharply cut the number of warnings sent to drugmakers for false or misleading advertising. The FDA, which monitors drug promotions, issued more than 250 letters to companies about problems in their ads between January 1999 and December 2001, according to Representative Henry Waxman, a California Democrat. However, from December 2001 through August 2002, the agency sent only nineteen such letters, a 70 percent drop. "It appears that FDA is now granting major drug manufacturers virtually a free pass," Waxman wrote in a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson.
And it's not just in the United States. The major pharmaceutical companies have managed to exert undue influence in worldwide attempts to shut down the alternative health industry. For example, the underlying proposal to establish the CODEX guidelines for worldwide standards for foods, drugs, and supplements has been guided by the three German companies Hoechst, Bayer, and BASF."
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We hope you enjoyed this week's excerpt from Lessons from the Miracle Doctors. Next week, we'll examine if drug company money buys medical opinion. If you enjoyed this excerpt and would like to get a copy of the book for yourself, please visit one of the following resources.
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