Drugmakers, hospitals and insurers continued to pour millions of dollars into lobbying during the second quarter of this year, hoping to limit the damage to their bottom line as lawmakers and the Obama administration wrangle over landmark health-care legislation.
New disclosure reports that began arriving Monday in Congress showed familiar players at the top of the health-care influence heap, including $6.2 million in lobbying by the dominant Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) and $4 million by the American Medical Association.
Many health companies and associations increased their first-quarter lobbying expenditures, sometimes dramatically. The Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association upped its lobbying expenditures by a full million, to 2.8 million dollars in the second quarter; GlaxoSmithKline's spending jumped from $1.8 million to $2.3 million; Novartis grew from $1.4 million to $1.8 million; and Metlife Group reported $1.7 million, up nearly 50 percent. Allstate, which spent less than $900,000 on lobbying through March, boosted its spending to more than $1.5 million from April to June.
Others simply kept up the pace, including Johnson & Johnson at $1.6 million and America's Health Insurance Plans and Bayer Corp. both approaching $2 million in spending from April to June. The AMA has spent a total of $8.2 million on lobbying through June of this year.
Final aggregate numbers are likely a day or two away as reports continue to trickle in and get tallied by journalists and watchdog groups. But the data so far suggest that the second quarter has a good chance of reaching a new high for the health-care lobby. The industry already set records from January to March, when health-care firms and their lobbyists spent money at the rate of $1.4 million a day.
There were a few surprising examples of declines, however, most notably PhRMA, which reported spending about $700,000 less than it did in the first quarter. But consider that PhRMA spent $8.6 million in the first half of 2008 -- just two thirds of what they've spent so far this year.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/health-care- reform/2009/07/health_care_continues_its_inte.html?hpid=topnews?hpid=topnews
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