If Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley, Democrat, hangs on to win the special election next week for Ted Kennedy’s old Senate seat, she will have to thank the cadre of elite K Street lobbyists who hosted a high-powered, high-dollar fundraiser for her Tuesday night on Capitol Hill.
And if Coakley, as promised, delivers vote No. 60 for President Obama’s package of health care regulations, taxes, subsidies, and mandates, these hired guns — who have spent this year doing the bidding of drug makers, hospitals, and insurers — will be fitting saviors of a health care “reform” that will enrich the special interests at the expense of consumers, taxpayers, and small businesses.
Coakley said in a debate Monday night that her opponent Scott Brown “wants to go back to those Bush-Cheney policies that provide for the very wealthiest.” But the very wealthiest were the ones feting and funding Coakley the next night. The Coakley fundraiser, held at Sonoma wine bar in the shadow of the Capitol, was bankrolled mostly by Democratic lobbyists with health care clients, according to a copy of the invitation I received.
The invitation names 24 “sponsors,” who raised at least $10,000 for Coakley’s campaign. One sponsor is the political action committee for Boston Scientific Corporation, a leading medical device and medical technology company. Another 17 of Coakley’s sponsors are registered lobbyists in Washington, 15 of whom have health care clients. The remaining sponsors include the wife of a lobbyist, a non-lobbyist lawyer at a lobbying firm, and a former Pennsylvania lobbyist.
This group delivered at least $200,000 for Coakley in the final week of her campaign, and so it’s worth taking a look at their clients. Heather and Tony Podesta, perhaps the most high-profile Democratic lobbyists these days, represent pharmaceutical companies Eli Lilly, Amgen, Genzyme, Merck, Novartis, and Roche. Insurers Cigna and HealthSouth are clients of Heather, while medical device giant General Electric is a client of Tony.
David Castagnetti, former chief of staff for Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, has the largest list of health care clients among Coakley’s sponsors, including America’s Health Insurance Plans, the D.C. lobby for health insurers that Obama used as his foil whenever talking tough about special interests. The Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers of America — the most prolific single-industry lobbying group in the country — also employs Castagnetti and three other Coakley sponsors. Castagnetti’s client list includes Merck, Humana, GE, Astra-Zeneca, and Abbott Laboratories.
When it comes to representing the Big Guys, the winner may be Coakley sponsor Susan Brophy, a former staffer for Sen. John Kerry, who is in the pay of the nation’s largest drug company, Pfizer, and the largest insurer, Blue Cross/Blue Shield.
Other health care companies represented on the list of Coakley’s top-tier moneymen and moneywomen are Bristol-Myers, Amgen, Sanofi-Aventis, Forest Laboratories, United Health, Genzyme, and many more.
All of these companies have a vested interest in saving health care “reform” and tweaking the details of the final bill. For starters, the bill requires everyone to buy health insurance, probably including prescription drug insurance. It also provides hundreds of billions in subsidies for insurance and prescription drugs.
Drug maker Amgen, which has five of its lobbyists on Coakley’s host committee, may be the single biggest winner from “reform.” Amgen makes EPO, a blood thinner that is the best-selling drug in the category known as “biologic drugs,” which are more complex than ordinary drugs. The health care bills grant biologics 12 years of exclusivity (ordinary drugs get only five years), thus keeping low-priced generics off the market for more than a decade.
Amgen’s trade association, the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO), has a lobbyist — Chuck Brain — who is also on Coakley’s official list of fat cats. And in attendance Tuesday night was former Rep. Jim Greenwood, R-Pa., now the head of BIO [more on that here].
Coakley’s sponsors have plenty of powerful clients outside the health sector, such as Intel, General Motors, Goldman Sachs, Northrop Grumman, and Wal-Mart.
Coakley certainly wouldn’t be alone as a senator with a lobbyist-paid ticket to Washington. Many Republicans and Democrats also fit the bill. In fact, Amgen and the other biologic drug makers were very cozy with Ted Kennedy, and the state’s current interim senator, Paul Kirk, is a former drug company lobbyist. But if Coakley delivers vote No. 60 for health care in the wake of this BIO-AHIP-PhRMA wine-bar lovefest, it will help highlight what this bill does: It enriches the special interests in the name of “reform.”
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Here are some of Coakley fundraiser hosts with some of their current health care clients:
- Thomas Boggs, Patton Boggs: Bristol-Myers Squibb
- Chuck Brain, Capitol Hill Strategies: Amgen, BIO, Merck, PhRMA
- Susan Brophy, Glover Park Group: Blue Cross, Pfizer
- Steven Champlin, Duberstein Group: AHIP, Novartis, Sanofi-Aventis
- Licy Do Canto, Raben Group: Amgen
- Gerald Cassidy, Cassidy & Associates: U. Mass Memorial Health Care
- David Castagnetti, Mehlman, Vogel, Castagnetti: Abbot Labs, AHIP, Astra-Zenaca, General Electric, Humana, Merck, PhRMA.
- Steven Elmendorf, Elmendorf Strategies: Medicines Company, PhRMA, United Health
- Shannon Finley, Capitol Counsel: Amgen, Astra-Zeneca, Blue Cross, GE, PhRMA, Sanofi-Aventis.
- Heather Podesta, Heather Podesta & Partners: Cigna, Eli Lilly, HealthSouth
- Tony Podesta, Podesta Group: Amgen, GE, Merck, Novartis.
- Robert Raben, Raben Group: Amgen, GE.
Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Coakley-in-trouble-Pharma-and-HMO-lobbyists-to-the-rescue-81067542.html#ixzz0cVWtoBL5
Timothy P. Carney, The Examiner’s lobbying editor, can be reached at [email protected]. He writes an op-ed column that appears on Friday.
