SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
lobbying
Report Exposes Big Pharma Front Groups Posing as Patient Advocates
"When your board is stacked with industry insiders, your primary funding comes from pharma, and your talking points mirror those of drug lobbyists, you're not a patient advocacy organization—you're a PR operation."
May 19, 2025
A report published Monday reveals that a number of organizations claiming to represent the interests of patients are actually pharmaceutical industry front groups working against efforts to bring down drug costs in the United States, including by lobbying the Trump administration to scale back Medicare price negotiations.
The new analysis by Patients for Affordable Drugs Now (P4AD), which stressed that it doesn't take money from organizations that profit from the production or distribution of prescription medications, spotlights six groups: the Alliance for Aging Research, the American Action Forum, the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest, the Council for Affordable Health Coverage, the Pacific Research Institute, and Seniors 4 Better Care.
The featured organizations, according to P4AD, "are posing as independent patient or policy groups while acting as mouthpieces for the drug industry's agenda—all while raking in pharma cash, fighting Medicare negotiation, and pushing misleading claims to block reforms."
Seniors 4 Better Care, for instance, is a shell group of the American Prosperity Alliance, the president of which "has a history of lobbying for the healthcare industry, including for organizations at the Healthcare Association of New York and insurance providers such as MVP Healthcare," P4AD's report observes.
"The group's treasurer, Parker Hamilton Poling, is a former lobbyist for pharmaceutical companies like Roche and Cencora," the report notes. "Brian Berry, the organization's secretary, also has a history of lobbying for Chinese biotech companies like Complete Genomics."
Earlier this year, Seniors 4 Better Care bankrolled an ad that directly urged President Donald Trump to end the "pill penalty," a label the pharmaceutical industry has used to describe the treatment of small-molecule prescription drugs under the Inflation Reduction Act's Medicare price negotiation provisions.
Last month, in a major gift to Big Pharma and industry lobbyists, Trump signed an executive order aimed at delaying Medicare negotiations for small-molecule drugs, which represent 90% of prescription medicines currently in circulation.
Another group highlighted in P4AD's report is the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest (CMPI), which describes itself as "a nonprofit, nonpartisan research and educational organization that seeks to advance the discussion and development of patient-centered healthcare."
P4AD notes that "every single member" of the organization's board has ties to the pharmaceutical industry. Peter Pitts, CMPI's president and co-founder, "primarily worked at firms hired by the pharmaceutical industry following an 18-month stint at the Food and Drug Administration," P4AD's report states.
"While working at major firms, such as Porter Novelli, Pitts retained his role at CMPI and insisted it was not a conflict of interest," the report continues. "He also currently teaches at the University of Paris, Descartes School of Medicine, a department that is funded by AstraZeneca."
Merith Basey, P4AD's executive director, said that "when your board is stacked with industry insiders, your primary funding comes from pharma, and your talking points mirror those of drug lobbyists, you're not a patient advocacy organization—you're a PR operation."
"Polling shows that Americans are aware that pharmaceutical corporations are the primary drivers of high drug prices, which is why the industry funds front groups to mislead the public and protect its bottom line," said Basey. "Patients and policymakers deserve to know whose interests these groups truly represent."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Under Trump 2.0, Business Is Booming for Corporate Lobbying Firms
"Lobbying firms like Ballard Partners know they can trust the Trump administration to fight on behalf of their corporate clients."
Apr 23, 2025
Disclosures filed this week show that lobbying firms with close ties to U.S. President Donald Trump's White House have seen business surge at the start of 2025, with one group that used to employ Trump's chief of staff and attorney general more than doubling its first-quarter revenue compared to last year.
Ballard Partners, a firm led by a Trump donor, reported $14 million in lobbying revenue in the first three months of this year, up from $6.2 million during the same time in 2024.
Politicoreported earlier this week that Ballard "has disclosed more than 130 new lobbying clients just since Election Day, including JPMorgan Chase, Chevron, Palantir, Netflix, Ripple Labs, and the Business Roundtable."
Attorney General Pam Bondi and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles both previously lobbied for Ballard, as did Trump's deputy director of personnel, Trent Morse.
"Lobbying firms like Ballard Partners know they can trust the Trump administration to fight on behalf of their corporate clients," the anti-corruption group End Citizens United said in response to the new disclosures.
Mother Jonesnoted that Ballard "wasn't the only lobbying firm to see a Trump bump."
"Mercury Public Affairs, where Wiles briefly worked repping a tobacco company, reported earning $5.1 million from lobbying in the first quarter of 2025—nearly half the $11.4 million it earned in all of 2024," the outlet observed. "Miller Strategies, run by super-lobbyist Jeff Miller (the firm's website includes a link to a Wall Street Journalarticle proclaiming Miller 'Trump's K Street rainmaker' for his prominent role in campaign fundraising), reported earning $8.6 million in the first three months of this year. In all of 2024, it only reported $12.6 million."
Despite claiming on the campaign trail that he was "not a big person for lobbyists" and that politicians "have to stop listening" to them, Trump has shown a willingness to do their bidding at the start of his second term in the White House.
Earlier this month, as Common Dreamsreported, Trump signed an executive order aimed at delaying Medicare negotiations for a major category of prescription drugs after pharmaceutical industry lobbyists pushed aggressively for the change.
On Monday, The Leverreported that Trump's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) "hid data that mapped out the locations of thousands of dangerous chemical facilities, after chemical industry lobbyists demanded that the Trump administration take down the public records."
"After President Donald Trump's victory in November, chemical companies donated generously to his inauguration fund," the outlet observed. "Oil giant ExxonMobil, which is a member of the American Chemistry Council, the industry's main lobbying arm, donated $1 million. The multinational chemical company DuPont donated $250,000."
Trump has placed Lynn Dekleva, a former lobbyist for the American Chemistry Council and DuPont, at the head of an EPA office with "the authority to approve new chemicals for use," The New York Timesreported in February.
During her time with the American Chemistry Council, Dekleva led the group's lobbying campaign to limit EPA regulations on formaldehyde, which the U.S. National Toxicology Program labels as a known carcinogen.
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Trump Just Caved to Big Pharma—Again': New Order Aims to Delay Drug Price Negotiations
"Extending negotiation delay periods is nothing but a total capitulation to the demands of drug corporation lobbyists," said one advocate.
Apr 16, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order that aims to delay Medicare negotiations for a broad category of prescription drugs, handing the deep-pocketed pharmaceutical industry a major win as it lobbies aggressively against efforts to rein in its pricing power.
Trump's order, titled "Lowering Drug Prices by Once Again Putting Americans First," instructs Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to work with Congress to "modify" the Medicare drug price negotiation program that was established under the Biden administration and has already yielded significant results despite pharma companies' best efforts to block it in court.
Specifically, Trump calls for a four-year extension of the period during which small-molecule prescription drugs are exempt from price negotiations with Medicare. Under the Inflation Reduction Act, small-molecule drugs—which are typically taken in pill form and represent 90% of medications currently in circulation—are not subject to the price negotiation process until at least nine years after their Food and Drug Administration approval date.
Steve Knievel, a drug policy advocate at Public Citizen, warned in a statement that by pushing back the negotiation date for many drugs, Trump's order could do the opposite of its stated goal, potentially reversing recent progress on an issue that has long plagued the United States.
"Further delaying Medicare drug price negotiation would lead to higher prices for patients and taxpayers, not lower ones," said Knievel. "Empowering Medicare to negotiate drug prices is the only significant legislative measure taken to address Big Pharma price gouging in the last 40 years. Now Trump proposes to undermine that singular achievement."
"Extending negotiation delay periods," Knievel added, "is nothing but a total capitulation to the demands of drug corporation lobbyists that want to continue to overcharge Medicare beneficiaries and taxpayers."
The advocacy group Protect Our Care said following the order that "Trump just caved to Big Pharma—again."
"His new executive order pushes to delay Medicare drug price negotiations, giving drug companies four extra years to price gouge seniors," said Protect Our Care. "The only winners here are the drug companies."
The president's new order echoes language that pharma lobbyists have used in their messaging against the Medicare price negotiation program, which the industry has opposed from the start.
The first section of the order states that the four-year difference between when small-molecule drugs and biologics are subject to Medicare price negotiations under current law is known as the "pill penalty"—a label that the pharmaceutical industry's largest lobbying organization has invoked repeatedly in its attacks on the Biden-era program.
The "pill penalty" language was also used in ads run by a group called Seniors 4 Better Care, which—as Sludge's Donald Shaw and David Moore revealed—"is not really a seniors group, but rather a front for a lobbyist-led shell group called the American Prosperity Alliance."
"Seniors 4 Better Care has ramped up its spending on ads that appear to be targeting Trump and his inner circle," Shaw and Moore reported in February.
Earlier this year, Republican lawmakers in the House and Senate—including leading recipients of pharmaceutical industry campaign cash—introduced legislation that would delay the price negotiation process for small-molecule drugs, signaling GOP support for the objectives laid out in Trump's executive order.
"Make no mistake," Patients for Affordable Drugs executive director Merith Basey said of the legislation, "this is yet another attempt by Big Pharma to rig the system in its favor—at the expense of patients."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular