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Joe Biden’s lobbyists are helping Big Pharma profiteers

The pharmaceutical industry wants Americans to continue paying far more for medicines than people in any other country, to protect their tremendous profits. And one of Joe Biden’s top campaign consulting firms is helping them.
 
by Andrew Perez
 
Part 2 - “Politicians Need a Win”
 
The Canal Partners Media website touts its work as Biden’s “lead buying agency” and its “experience championing progressive causes.

Media Buying & Analytics, a company affiliated with Canal Partners Media, handled almost $450 million worth of ad buys for Biden’s 2020 campaign, according to OpenSecrets. Another apparent affiliate bought ads for Bernie Sanders’s 2016 presidential bid.

The firm has made media buys for official party committees, including the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. They have also worked with party-aligned super PACs and progressive groups like MoveOn.

In recent months, Canal Partners Media has been buying ads for a new client: the Rare Access Action Project (RAAP), a drug industry front group that received ​​$260,000 from the powerful drug lobby Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) in 2019.

The RAAP website says its partners include the Biotechnology Innovation Organization, a drug industry lobbying group, and more than a dozen pharmaceutical companies, including Alexion, Regeneron, Sanofi, Takeda, and UCB. These companies could all potentially see some of their drug prices negotiated under the terms of Democrats’ scaled-back drug pricing plan.

RAAP’s leadership team includes several corporate consultants from Acuity Strategic Partners, as well as former Republican representative Matt Salmon, who is running for governor in Arizona.

The ad campaign from RAAP has been targeting several Democratic senators who are up for reelection in 2022: Michael Bennet of Colorado, Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, and Patty Murray of Washington. They’ve also targeted Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, who is up in 2024.

Right now, politicians need a win, and rare disease patients are going to lose,” says the group’s Colorado ad. “In Congress’ rush to spend trillions, they’re putting huge cost increases on the development of treatments for rare diseases — killing research, stopping breakthroughs, and stealing hope from 25 million Americans with rare diseases. So before we let Congress score a win, think of what millions stand to lose. Tell Michael Bennet to protect rare disease patients.

The argument that lower drug prices would significantly hinder research and development is false: A Congressional Budget Office study last year found that even if profits on top drugs decreased by 15 to 25 percent, it would only result in “a 0.5 percent average annual reduction in the number of new drugs entering the market in the first decade.” That’s because the federal government already heavily subsidizes research on virtually every drug that gets approved for sale in the United States.

There is also a lucrative incentive program under the Orphan Drug Act for companies developing drugs to treat rare diseases. An investigative report last month from House Democrats found that pharmaceutical companies have abused this program, which was meant to encourage companies to develop medicines with a limited commercial market. The report found companies are using orphan drug designations to protect and extend monopolies on “widely used and commercially successful drugs” and to “justify charging high prices.

As for Democrats’ drug pricing provision in the Build Back Better bill, pharma-aligned Democrats have already significantly pared back the measure, saving the industry potentially as much as $450 billion over a decade. While the compromise version would allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices for the first time, it would affect far fewer drugs than what Democrats originally proposed.

The government would only be permitted to negotiate prices on a handful of the costliest drugs to Medicare each year, and only on drugs that are past their exclusivity period and have no competition. The legislation would also impose inflation caps to prevent companies from increasing drug prices far beyond what they’re charging now. That may sound promising, but prescription costs in the United States are already way too high. The measure would also not allow the government to negotiate launch prices for new drugs, so companies would likely raise those.

Of course, some drugmakers would still see their drug prices negotiated under Democrats’ limited proposal — and a number of those companies are listed as partners on RAAP’s website. According to Bloomberg Government, some of the drugs that could end up on the government’s negotiation list are sold by Alexion, Regeneron, Sanofi, Takeda, and UCB — which are all RAAP partners — as well as AstraZeneca, which owns Alexion.

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