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Is the Drug Industry Deceiving Seniors?

Tue, 06/20/2000 - 11:00pm — Karen Stevenson
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Congress Watch has issued a new report, "The Truth Behind the Drug Industry?s Deception of America?s Seniors." This report says that the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) created the innocuous-sounding Citizens for Better Medicare (CBM) to serve as its front group. Through CBM, they have budgeted at least $65 million for television advertising since July 1999, and supplemented that with radio, print and Internet ads, along with direct mail appeals from CBM and its member groups. Congress Watch reports that the drug industry has focused the bulk of its attention on trying to prevent the government from adding drug coverage to the Medicare program, for fear that would constrain drug prices. They also mention that the industry is hardly ailing. Fortune magazine has rated pharmaceuticals as the most profitable industry in the country for most of the last three decades. In 1999, pharmaceuticals posted an 18.6 percent return on revenue, more than three times the Fortune 500 median of 5.0 percent.

Congress Watch has created a comprehensive Web site devoted to the issue of prescription drug costs. Congress Watch is a division of Public Citizen, a 150,000 member national non-profit, non-partisan, member-supported public interest group founded by Ralph Nader in 1971.

Congress Watch has issued a new report, "The Truth Behind the Drug Industry?s Deception of America?s Seniors." This report says that the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) created the innocuous-sounding Citizens for Better Medicare (CBM) to serve as its front group. Through CBM, they have budgeted at least $65 million for television advertising since July 1999, and supplemented that with radio, print and Internet ads, along with direct mail appeals from CBM and its member groups. Congress Watch reports that the drug industry has focused the bulk of its attention on trying to prevent the government from adding drug coverage to the Medicare program, for fear that would constrain drug prices. They also mention that the industry is hardly ailing. Fortune magazine has rated pharmaceuticals as the most profitable industry in the country for most of the last three decades. In 1999, pharmaceuticals posted an 18.6 percent return on revenue, more than three times the Fortune 500 median of 5.0 percent.

Congress Watch has created a comprehensive Web site devoted to the issue of prescription drug costs. Congress Watch is a division of Public Citizen, a 150,000 member national non-profit, non-partisan, member-supported public interest group founded by Ralph Nader in 1971.