Monthly Archives: December 2011

Part of the reason healthcare costs keep skyrocketing is the near unrestricted power of the pharmaceutical lobby. Drug makers, for instance, hired an army of lobbyists to pass President Bush’s drug benefit expansion, known as Medicare Part D, with a provision that restricted the government from negotiating for lower prices. Efforts to import cheaper drugs have been similarly squashed by K Street firms working on behalf of pharmaceutical corporations. While the drug industry is well-known for its hefty campaign contributions, mysterious front groups and even illicit payments to doctors, there appears be other avenues for influence, such as the popular conservative media outlet, National Review.

Disclosures reviewed by The Second Alarm show that two years ago, the primary lobbying association for the drug industry gave $205,000 to the National Review Institute, a nonprofit that supports the monthly magazine founded by right-wing legend William F. Buckley, Jr. Below is a screenshot from the disclosure, which can be found in full here:

The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the group that gave to National Review, represents large drug corporations like AstraZeneca, Bayer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, GlaxoSmithKline, and Merck. In 2009, the National Review Institute received $619,181 in contributions, meaning that the drug lobby’s check constituted about a third of overall income for the magazine’s nonprofit.

The time period in which PhRMA made its contribution coincided with helpful political attacks emanating from the pages of the National Review. The National Review took a leading role demonizing a cost-saving proposal from the Obama administration that could diminish millions, if not billions, in pharmaceutical company profits.

In 2009, as President Obama fought to deliver reform by cutting some of the waste out of the health care system. His first signature accomplishment, the stimulus, contained some initial funding of Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER). CER would set up an independent body to develop a system to find the best medical outcomes, and in doing so, save up to $700 billion by some estimates in annual health spending. PhRMA recognized quickly that CER would most likely steer medical professional towards prescribing more generic medications over branded drugs, thus slicing a sizable share of corporate profits.

While PhRMA launched ads to dissuade the Obama administration from enacting such waste-cutting reforms, the National Review took a more nasty route.

One article slammed the initial CER funding as a “slush fund” to give government control of health care decisions. In reality, the CER would help doctors and scientists have more control of how taxpayer is spent, while taking away those decisions from industry representatives.

Writing for National Review, Charles Krauthammer even advised Democrats that a health law without CER would be more likely to pass.

The National Review website also served as a sounding board for various conservatives to experiment with hits on CER. Congressman Eric Cantor published an op-ed complaining that Democrats refused to accept language into health reform that would have canceled out the CER funding Obama initiated in the stimulus. Pointing to CER funding, Peter Ferrera, a fellow at something called the Institute for Policy Innovation, wrote a piece for National Review demanding that Republicans reject any “bureaucracy that would have any power to ration health care.” Ferrera added that such power would be “the real death panels.”

Notably, National Review did criticize its corporate benefactor by name multiple times. The magazine lashed out at PhRMA for making a deal with the Obama administration to support the Baucus health reform legislation in exchange for a promise not to negotiate for Medicare drug prices or import drugs from Canada. Editor Rich Lowry recommended that PhRMA should back out of any deal with the Obama “Axis of Evil,” and kill any effort to reform health care. The magazine believed that drug company lobbyists should be more ruthless.

While PhRMA ultimately cut a check to run ads in support of health reform, the lobby continued to play both sides, funding front groups like the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest, a Tea Party-aligned ant-health reform group I wrote about back in November of 2009.

CER is a conservative idea, in a way, because it forces the government to cut waste and reduce costs for taxpayers. Science-driven efforts like CER take medical decisions out of the hands of lobbyists and politicians and instead empower doctors to make Medicare reimbursement policies. But perhaps National Review would attack it anyways, given the magazine’s proclivity to slime any idea connected to Barack Obama. In either case, the big drug lobby rewarded the magazine handsomely.

Originally posted at Nation of Change.

By now I’m sure you’ve seen Chris Moody’s article about Frank Luntz, the GOP’s message guru, and his talking points on how to combat Occupy Wall Street’s arguments. For a great analysis of the message, read Zaid Jilani and Joe Romm.

But here’s whats missing in the reporting of Luntz’s comments: According to his firm’s website Luntz is paid by Wall Street giants like Citigroup, Bank of America, Wachovia (now part of Wells Fargo), Swiss financial conglomerate UBS, Chase bank, and others. It’s even possible he’s recycling ideas he’s already given to firms like Citi.

Here’s the secret about Luntz. You may only him from his political endeavors. Of course, he famously helped write the Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America in 1994. You can find him awkwardly leading focus group sessions on Fox News. And every now and then, he will pop up to advise a Republican candidate or issue group. (Flashback! Here’s a video of me speaking to Luntz after meeting with GOP lawmakers at the height of the BP oil spill controversy)

Luntz’s political work, however, is small potatoes. As I understand it, from speaking to people who’ve known Luntz for years, Luntz does the high-profile, headline-grabbing crap to generate lucrative corporate contracts. That’s where the money is, and that’s how his polling firm apparently derives most of its revenues. If you really want to see how Republicans are messaging around OWS, find out what The Tarrance Group, McLaughlin & Associations, and Public Opinion Strategies Inc are telling Boehner and Cantor. That’s where the the high-end Republican advice comes from; but those firms, unlike Luntz, prefer the background rather than the spotlight. Luntz just wants more corporate contracts, and will do anything to publicize himself and pretend to be expert on something like sliming protesters. That way, a Goldman Sachs contract or whatever is more likely to land in his lap.

Glenn Ivey, the former Prince George’s County state’s attorney (what they call a DA back in Maryland), is challenging progressive Congresswoman Donna Edwards in the Democratic primary. To make a long story short, the local Maryland political machine, K Street interests, and a group of pro-Likud donors never liked Edwards. She has a pesky problem of always voting on principle. So they encouraged Ivey, a former corporate lobbyist, veteran Capitol Hill staffer and current attorney at the lobbying firm Venable, to challenge her after they redrew her district (for more on Ivey, check out DailyKos diarist brooklynbadboy’s post).

Taking a peek at Ivey’s campaign, which was launched only a few weeks ago, he seems to have messed up already. The Federal Elections Commission recently mailed the Ivey campaign a letter complaining that the candidate failed to submit basic information in his application to file a campaign committee. According to the letter, he didn’t even bother to disclose which office he is running for. View it below:

D’oh!