A Big Drug, a Big Lobbying Push

In the last three years, the drug company Schering-Plough has spent more than $12 million lobbying Congress to pass legislation extending its exclusive rights to the blockbuster antihistamine Claritin, which will otherwise expire in 2002.

The company donated $50,000, for instance, to the reelection campaign of Sen. Robert Torricelli (D-N.J.) one day before he introduced a bill that could add three years to Claritin’s patent. And the company let Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) use its corporate jet for the price of a first-class airline ticket, far less than the cost of operating the plane. Hatch has scheduled a vote today in the Senate Judiciary Committee on Torricelli’s bill.

There is of course no evidence that the company bought the support of these and other legislators, but it does seem to have the ears of many lawmakers who are trying to fast-track the bill into law this week by attaching it to an important appropriations bill. Such a legislative maneuver would be hugely irresponsible.

The bill goes well beyond a favor to one drug maker, cutting the Food and Drug Administration out of all decisions about drug patent extensions. Currently, the U.S. Patent Office bases a drug patent extension on criteria established by the FDA concerning whether a company is acting in good faith in requesting an extension. The Torricelli bill requires the Patent Office to develop its own criteria about “public interest and fairness” and defines those terms to exclude consumers’ need for lower prices and the negative impact of high prescription drug costs on taxpayers and the health care system.

Schering-Plough CEO Richard Jay Kogan argues that it took a long time to get Claritin on the market, shortening its period of exclusivity in the marketplace, and that profits generated through a patent extension are needed to conduct sufficient research and development. But Schering-Plough reported $1.8 billion in profit last year, even after spending $1 billion on R&D.; And according to a new study by Boston University, the pharmaceutical industry was the most profitable U.S. industry in 1998 and has been among the most profitable for 30 years.

Compare that prosperity with the cost to consumers who have seen drug prices rise three times faster than overall health costs. It is patients, not patents, that are in need of congressional protection.