This wasn’t the most widely publicized or exciting event, but Phrma held its annual meeting yesterday at The Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Washington, DC., where a few hundred people showed up to network, kibbitz and plot lobbying strategies.

There were no great revelations, but here are a few choice remarks that were made for public consumption before and after the rubber chicken served for lunch:

Kevin Sharer, the Phrma chairman and Amgen ceo, who suffered terrible publicity recently over withholding clinical trial results and side effects caused by a key drug, told his colleagues that he finds it tiresome picking up the newspaper every day and seeing “another bad thing reported about what we do.”…Americans must be willing to pay for the “value and innovation.” If not, he said, “they will have to pay the consequences.”

Andy Stern, president of the 1.8 million-member Service Employees International Union, scolded the crowd about the need for an affordable health care system and the industry’s lack of involvement: “To be direct and impolite, your silence is deafening. This is the time to stand up for change. We need your voice.

Michael Leavitt, Health and Human Services Secretary, offered the White House version of populist rhetoric: “The administration believes we need to put more emphasis on drug safety, and particularly post-market safety, and we need to see the approval of generic medicines accelerated.”

Hat tip to Robert Cohen of The Star-Ledger of New Jersey for the feed.[tags]Andy Stern, Kevin Sharer, Michael Levitt, Phrma[/tags]