The pharmaceutical industry's top lobbying group is a longtime force in Washington, but something changed earlier this year when Democrats passed legislation to allow Medicare to negotiate some prices with drugmakers despite PhRMA's vehement opposition. The group had characterized the bill as an existential threat to the industry. This week, POLITICO's Megan R. Wilson and STAT's Rachel Cohrs investigated the fallout in separate pieces. Previously, PhRMA was known for using "scorched-earth" tactics to advance its interests, Cohrs reported. But in its attack on the Democrats' bill, "it didn't mount a pressure campaign like it has in the past. It didn't dramatically spike its spending on lobbying," Cohrs wrote. "Its aura of invincibility has been punctured, and its hubris softened with a touch of humility." PhRMA also didn't follow through on threats to go after Democrats who voted for the legislation — which the trade group's president, Steve Ubl, told Wilson it would. PhRMA spokesperson Brian Newell told STAT that the group "left everything on the field" and will "use every opportunity to fix this bad law." Money talks: But PhRMA didn't increase its spending proportionally to the ostensible threat as Democrats took power in the White House and both chambers of Congress. In fact, according to OpenSecrets, a group that tracks money in politics, its political action committee contributions to congressional candidates in the 2022 election cycle are comparable to its contributions during the last midterm election in 2018, with its donations to Democrats barely budging. In terms of overall lobbying, PhRMA stayed in line with its recent spending levels, according to OpenSecrets. PhRMA is third in overall lobbying spending in 2022 so far, according to OpenSecrets, having doled out more than $22 million — behind only the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Realtors. But the chamber and the real estate brokers spent more than twice as much as the drug giants. After-action review: Days after its August drug-pricing defeat, the top Democrat in PhRMA's Washington office, Debra DeShong , left. She has connections on both the House and Senate sides, having worked as press secretary to Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) before he became House majority leader, and then-Sen. Robert Torricelli (D-N.J.), among others. Now, PhRMA is looking in the mirror, commissioning a report on its advocacy before its most significant loss in decades, as Wilson reported. Newell called it "standard operating procedure" for "most organizations." "The industry has lost face with Democrats, it's losing face with Republicans — the populist wing of the Republican Party no longer supports the industry," one industry lobbyist familiar with the report told Wilson. "The industry needs to face a reckoning." The report's conclusions are set to be announced at PhRMA's board meeting this month, three people with knowledge of the report said. Heavy is the head: STAT reported that most lobbyists it spoke with thought Ubl would hold onto his job. He's one of Washington, D.C.'s highest paid trade association executives, earning more than $4.5 million in 2019, the most recent year for which IRS data is available. "I mean this in the nicest way possible: Steve is a … cockroach. He would survive a nuclear holocaust," one industry lobbyist told STAT. Make what you will of this: STAT later shortened that quotation to just the last sentence, noting it was updated to "truncate the quote."
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