Do not make the mistake of thinking that because my conclusion is the same as another person's that my reasoning is the same
Who benefits?
In the thick of the 2000 presidential campaign, executives at Bristol-Myers Squibb, one of the nation's largest drug companies, received an urgent message: donate money to George W. Bush.
The message did not come from Republican campaign officials. It came from top Bristol-Myers executives, according to four executives who say they donated to Mr. Bush under pressure from their bosses. They said that they were urged to donate the maximum — $1,000 in their own name and $1,000 in their spouse's — and were warned that the company's chief executive would be notified if they failed to give.
Bristol-Myers said no one was forced to donate. [p6: they donated to Mr. Bush under pressure from their bosses. But they were'nt forced. Coersion? Extortion? This should be illegal.]But elsewhere in the drug industry, the message about the election was much the same. At some companies, officials circulated a videotape of Vice President Al Gore railing against the high price of prescription drugs. A torrent of contributions for Mr. Bush and other Republicans resulted. And the money kept flowing, right through the elections of 2002.
Those donations may soon pay off handsomely for the pharmaceutical business. Four years ago, a Democrat was in the White House and the industry was bitterly fighting a prescription drug proposal that it said would have led to price controls. Today, a Republican-controlled Congress is preparing to send a Republican president a measure with a central provision — the use of private health plans to deliver Medicare prescription drug benefits — that is tailor-made to the industry's specifications.
The story of how pharmaceutical manufacturers helped shape the Medicare drug benefit is, in part, that of a calculated decision by a lucrative industry to throw its financial weight behind one political party — with $50 million in campaign contributions over the last four years, the vast majority to Republicans. It is also the story of a dogged, mostly unseen campaign that included a small army of lobbyists in Washington and a network of industry-financed groups, which carried the drug makers' message to the public.
Throughout, the industry had a single goal: to defeat any legislation that would let Medicare negotiate steep discounts on the prices of medicines for its 40 million beneficiaries.