More lobbyists than congressmen, 625 with a budget of $197 million– yes, the largest.
- Eli Lilly
- Pfizer
- Merck, Raymond V. Gilmartin, chief exec.
- Bayer
- Johnson & Johnson
- Bristol-Myers, Peter R. Dolan, chief exec.
- G. D. Searle (Donald Rumsfeld is former chief executive).
- Mitchell Daniels, Bush’s budget director, is a former executive with Eli Lilly.
Top executives have met with Bush several times. To respond to what he thinks the nation needs? Or tell him what they would like him to do?
On Wednesday, October 31, they met with Tom Ridge, Bush’s appointed director of homeland security, for 90 minutes. They offered a partnership with America. Ridge gratefully accepted.
Executives from generic (cheap) drug companies have been conspicuously absent from these meetings.
Haley Barbour, former chairman of the Republican National Committee, is a lobbyist for Bristol-Myers Squibb.
70% of their donations went to Republicans last year, $26 million. Republicans and Democrats alike assure us that the drug industry willingly spends $26 million dollars on an election without the slights expectation of any kind of favorable treatment.
Americans spent $100 billion– yes BILLION — on drugs last year, 2x as much as 1990. Drugs were supposed to reduce the cost of medicine because they provided more cost efficient treatment strategies.
All of our cost-reducing measures should be so efficient!
Bayer’s total pharmaceutical sales: $5.8 billion. Cipro, the Anthrax treatment, accounts for $1.6 billion of that. The normal profit margin on Cipro tablets: 95%. They cut it down to 65% to mollify congress and the president.