The Health 202: The drug industry keeps ramping up its spending on lobbying
Paige Winfield Cunningham
with Alexandra Ellerbeck
The pharmaceutical industry keeps turning up the dial on lobbying, setting massive new spending records in its intensive effort to influence Congress and the Biden administration.
Yet the administration isn’t capitulating to all of the industry’s demands.
To be fair, the White House did back away from including an industry-hated drug pricing proposal in its latest spending plan. Yet this week, President Biden angered drugmakers when he said he supports the waiving of intellectual property protections for coronavirus vaccines.
The industry increased its lobbying spending by 6.3 percent in the first quarter.