Right before everyone started shutting down for Thanksgiving, the folks at Politico who track the "influence" industry in Washington, DC ran an interesting item about the pharmaceutical industry. Specifically, it relates to how much money the industry ran through various independent-sounding groups to try to shut down Medicare drug price negotiation-- about the only component of the so-called "Inflation Reduction Act" that actually involved government spending less money, but also a policy whose GOP version under Trump was (not surprisingly) a lot more appealing to 50 percent of the country. 

From Politico:

The pharmaceutical industry’s leading lobbying organization contributed $7.5 million to the House GOP-linked dark money group American Action Network and $1.6 million to the centrist dark money group Center Forward last year, Megan Wilson and I report.
[...]
— American Action Network spent millions on advertising in 2022 opposing Democrats’ drug pricing reform efforts, which eventually became law as part of the Inflation Reduction Act in a watered down form, while Center Forward financed millions of dollars in ads backing Democratic lawmakers who threw up roadblocks to the drug pricing reforms.
— PhRMA’s 2022 donation to Center Forward was less than the $1.7 million PhRMA sent to the nonprofit in 2021 and the $2.7 million it contributed in 2020. But the seven-figure check to Center Forward last year made PhRMA the group’s second-largest donor, comprising 11 percent of the nonprofit’s revenues, according to Center Forward’s tax filings.
— Center Forward, which is aligned with the moderate Blue Dog Democrats, is chaired by former congressman-turned-lobbyist Bud Cramer (D-Ala.). Last year, the group funneled a little over $2 million to its affiliated super PAC, its tax filing shows.
— The super PAC in turn spent more than $1 million on independent expenditures supporting one of the drug pricing proposal’s top congressional critics, former Oregon Democratic Rep. Kurt Schrader, and attacking his primary opponent who ultimately defeated him, according to data from OpenSecrets.

I mention this not to bash the pharmaceutical industry for spending money to try to defeat a policy it hated and is now suing over. That's what everyone in Washington does. 

I mention it because first, it gives a sense of what all the money the pharmaceutical industry made through blue state, big government COVID policies was simultaneously being spent on, and, second, because attacking Medicare drug price negotiation is not even Big Pharma's first or second biggest policy priority right now. 

Their top policy priority, based on their own website, is gutting the 340B drug discount program I've written about here, which deep red states Louisiana and Arkansas have been working to defend. These programs are vital to deep red, rural areas of the country where access to healthcare is more scarce, and where incomes are a lot lower.

Their second policy priority, based on their own website, is hammering pharmaceutical benefit managers because they don't like that PBMs are, under current law, incentivized to secure the lowest drug prices for those of us with insurance. 

How much money will be spent by the end of this year on these two things? Judging by what was spent in 2022 on trying to defeat Medicare drug price negotiation, probably quite a lot. Remember, you're footing the bill-- whether it happened through government-mandated and government-subsidized vaccines, or through over-high drug prices which in turn allow the companies to spend what they spend on "influence" and advertising.

We can stand in defense of getting the government out of the regulation business, but we also have to recognize that the current state of major corporations - like those of Big Pharma - is focused not on the product but on maximizing profits at the expense of the consumer - and they are more than willing to use the government to do so. 

That isn't free enterprise.