Big Pharma’s Signal To Joe Manchin
Drug companies are bankrolling West Virginia ads trying to bully the senator after he signaled he might support a drug pricing bill.
by Andrew Perez
In the first two years of the Biden presidency, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) has become one of big business’ favorite lawmakers, thanks to the way he stalled and ultimately killed Democrats’ Build Back Better bill, a health care and climate spending package that included the party’s signature drug pricing measure.
Now, with Manchin signaling he could support a new compromise budget bill that includes drug pricing reforms, Big Pharma isn’t taking any chances — and so it has started ramping up advertising pressure in his state. The industry is likely hoping for a repeat of Manchin’s habit of signaling support for popular initiatives like a billionaire tax, and then quickly backing down the moment moneyed interests raise objections.
Speaking to the world’s financial elites at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Monday, Manchin said Congress still has “an opportunity” to pass meaningful legislation before the midterm elections — including on prescription drug prices. The statement was significant, because Manchin has long asserted that he supports some measures to reduce medicine prices.
Fearing legislative progress, a nonprofit called the Alliance for Patient Access recently started running ads in the Washington area and all over West Virginia warning that Congress is debating legislation that would “hurt innovation” and prevent companies from developing new treatments.
The Alliance for Patient Access website makes clear the organization is funded by the pharmaceutical industry. The alliance published a list of its associate members and supporters in late 2020, which names the powerful drug lobby Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) as well as three dozen drugmakers.
The ads feature a woman named Katie who says she has chronic migraine disease.
“Treatments have come a long way, so the possibility of living without migraine gives me hope,” Katie says in the ad. “But Washington is considering walls that would hurt innovation. Please don’t let this happen. Innovation in medicine needs to keep going so that I keep having hope. To find new treatments for tomorrow, we can’t let Congress take away our hope today.”
Pharmaceutical companies AbbVie and Lundbeck are members of the Alliance for Patient Access and manufacture drugs used to prevent migraines.
Ads Belied By Federal Data
The ads’ central assertion that limiting drug prices would fundamentally stifle research and development is wildly false: Last year, the Congressional Budget Office found that even if profits on top drugs decreased by 15 to 25 percent, there would only be “a 0.5 percent average annual reduction in the number of new drugs entering the market in the first decade.”