Topics:Pharmaceutical Lobbying
Pharmaceutical Lobbying, Pharmaceutical industry lobbying comprises one of the most powerful and high spending corporate lobby groups in the United States, spearheaded by the PhRMA industry group. Doctoral students were asked to take "Pro", "Con", and "In Between" positions regarding the usefulness and harm of Pharmaceutical Lobbying.
Team
- Morrisson, D.
- Williamson, L.
(authors and sources listed alphabetically)
Arguments
Pro arguments
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Con arguments
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Vote Pre-Discussion Results
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Discussion Summary
Pharmaceutical industry lobbying comprises one of the most powerful and high spending corporate lobby groups in the United States, spearheaded by the PhRMA industry group. Proponents of PhRMA and corporate lobbying argue that PhRMA provides expertise to congress, who by and large do not have a competent enough understanding of the pharmaceutical industry to make political decisions that help the industry. However, anti-lobbyists argue that pharmaceutical lobbying practices have an inherent self-preserving interest given most groups have direct ties to the profit-driven industry, and that PhRMA donations to political campaigns create an inherent conflict of interest for those politicians. While they do provide expertise for ongoing research, their profit-driven biases can result in presenting incomplete findings on treatments, promoting high drug prices, and relaxing drug testing & distribution standards. The issue is hotly debated in the United States and is often a part of broader conversations about lobbying in general, which became substantially more polarized following the citizens united supreme court case that made it easier for companies, unions, and non-profits to spend more on political campaigns with less oversight.
Arguments For
- Expertise
- Congress has repeatedly passed bills that do substantial harm to the American pharmaceutical industry, with negative ramifications for pharmaceutical workers, consumers, and the country as a whole. Allowing PhRMA to lobby congress gives them a direct line to convince them to make better decisions for the country and for every stakeholder in the pharmaceutical industry. Ethical framing: Utilitarian
- Benefit to society
- While arguments about profiteering are valid, the pharma industry ultimately works to save lives and improve quality of life for tens of millions of Americans. The goals of the pharma industry are goals that all Americans should share, and allowing them to lobby congress helps them achieve an ethically sound goal as long as regulation exists to ensure that profiteering isn’t the primary goal of the lobbyists. Ethical framing: Deontological (rooted in social contract)
- Systemic Fairness
- While there are issues with pharmaceutical lobbying that could be regulated better, it would be unfair to specifically target pharmaceutical industry, who’s goals and function contribute to improving the health and well- being of everybody who needs healthcare, while ignoring other corporate lobbying groups. Zooming out even further, specifically arguing against corporate lobby groups while ignoring other lobby groups like nonprofits, unions, policy thinktanks, and international groups unnecessarily targets companies. Ethical framing: Deontological (fairness based) (4) Private-Public Cooperation – Allowing pharmaceutical companies to lobby congress and federal agencies helps streamline the process of private-public collaboration in pharmaceutical and related healthcare applications. Private- public collaboration has produced societal projects with the greatest impact on improving qualify of life in America, and hindering corporate lobbying is a move in the wrong direction for creating more of these projects. Ethical framing: Both utilitarian and deontological (duty/social contract)
Arguments Against
Lobbying practices have an inherent self-preserving interest given most groups have direct ties to the profit-driven industry. While they provide expertise for ongoing research, their profit-driven biases can result in presenting incomplete findings on treatments, promoting high drug prices, and relaxing drug testing & distribution standards. This self- serving behavior can be demonstrated by the staggering amounts invested in campaign contributions and continually climbing U.S. drug prices.
- The self-serving interest of lobbying tends to act over public interest, more specifically regarding public health. Pharmaceutical lobbying has an inherent profit-driven interest that conflicts with the needs of the public. Given their clear ties to industry funding, they cannot claim to fuel progress that solely benefits the consumer.
- Lobbyists can present incomplete or skewed data that might misrepresent the potential & effectiveness of a treatment sector. One argument for lobbying is the specific expertise and interpretations they can provide for ongoing pharmaceutical research. While they might have a deeper understanding of innovations compared to the average legislator, they are motivated to present the best possible interpretation while minimizing risks to the consumers. Their biases can misrepresent the potential for a treatment and result in wasteful spending from tax dollars allocated to fund this research.
- Lobbyists can aid in raising campaign contributions which may drive legislators to act against the interests of their constituents. While lobbying cannot directly funnel funding to politicians, there are clear workarounds in U.S. funding laws via PACs that are commonly exploited to provide campaign contributions. The favors levied from these contributions can spark uncertainty on whether legislators are working in the interests of their constituents when overseeing drug pricing reforms and relations of drug development & distribution standards.
- Historical lobbying has resulted in high drug pricing in the U.S. to support the bulk of pharmaceutical R&D costs for companies worldwide. Despite what defenders of pharmaceutical lobbyists will argue, the state of drug pricing in the United States is a prime example of how lobbying has benefitted the companies at the cost of the consumer. As it stands, the United States is the only major country without strict caps on drug pricing which means the bulk of R&D costs of pharmaceutical companies is mostly supported by the exorbitantly high drug prices which restricts treatment accessibility as a clear detriment to public health.
Vote Post-Discussion
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