Big pharma's hand on the pen
We've written about the seat at the table and the hand on the legislative pen that big companies buy with their influence. As we've pointed out, this is better than price fixing. By using legislation to limit costs (including the cost of exposure to liability) big companies set themselves up to make even more money without the risk of a having a zealous prosecutor pursuing them for anti-competitive behavior. Even better, they can use their trade associations to do the actual horsetrading with the politicians, keeping themselves at one remove.
The latest and one of the more blatant examples was outlined in a story in The Daily Tennessean newspaper (we were direct there by the blog Think Progress). The article ("Sen. Bill Frist's spokeswoman said he pledged publicly to amend the bill", 5/8/06) starts out thus:
Vaccine industry officials helped shape legislation behind the scenes that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist secretly amended into a bill to shield them from lawsuits, according to e-mails obtained by a public advocacy group.
E-mails and documents written by a trade group for the vaccine-makers show the organization met privately with Frist's staff and the White House about measures that would give the industry protection from lawsuits filed by people hurt by the vaccines.
The wording of the provision was exactly what the drug companies had dictated, according to e-mail and minutes acquired by a watchdog group.
It was inserted to an unrelated Defense Appropriation bill, one that was sure of passage. It was inserted at night as the voting began, so no one had any chance to review it and it got lost in complex itemized spending bill. It gives vaccine companies almost total immunity from lawsuit, if anything should go wrong with their drugs during an epidemic. The result for the drug companies is far lower insurance costs and far less risk. Worth billions, according to Roll Call Magazine, to a small group companies that make vaccines.
As Think Progress points out, one reason that Senator Frist and Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert did the bidding of the companies was their generous donations to political campaigns. It didn't hurt that the lobbying group included three former Frist aides as well as Hastert's son.
That the companies were given relief from legal penalties during a national emergency is an issue that could be debated one way or another. After all, there will have to be tough decisions made if effective vaccines could cause sometimes serious side effects. A mass and rapid vacination program would leave these companies in a difficult position, which might make them less eager to join in plans. That's certainly worth talking about.
Nevertheless, the fact that the law was written word-for-word by the beneficiaries and that it was sneaked into a bill with no debate or discussion indicates the power of big companies to twist circumstances in such a way that governments go out of their way to protect their profits. Had the legislators simply handed the cash to the vaccine companies, a scandal would have erupted. By indirectly rewarding those companies by assuming and excusing risk, only a minor scandal has arisen, and theat has been generally lost to public view.
