More Than $500 Million Spent for Lobbying by Health Care Interest Groups in 2009

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The health care sector and the insurance industry will have likely set a record for annual lobbying expenditures—more than a half of a billion dollars—in 2009. The health sector includes health care professionals (including physicians and nurses), pharmaceutical and health care products companies, hospitals and nursing homes, health services, and health maintenance organizations.

Between January and September 2009, health care interest groups had already spent $396.2 million in an attempt to influence the final outcome of health care reform legislation in the United States, according to an article in The New England Journal of Medicine. The article by Robert Steinbrook, MD, national correspondent for the journal, referred to federal data collected by the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan research group based in Washington, DC. The group tracks money in politics and the effect of money and lobbying activity on elections and public policy. If current trends continue, the pharmaceutical and health care products industries alone will have spent >$250 million, with >$160 million coming from the insurance industry.

During those first 9 months of the 2-year 2010 federal election cycle, Democrats had fared better than Republicans in campaign contributions, reversing a pattern of contributions from health care interests that previously favored Republicans. Democrats received 57% of total campaign contributions from pharmaceutical and health care products companies, 71% from hospitals and nursing homes, and 55% from health care professionals. “Since 2006, the health sector has spent $1.7 billion lobbying Congress and federal agencies—more money than any other sector of the economy,” the article noted.

See: http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/NEJMp0910879v1; http://www.opensecrets.org/.