The Garden State may be the nation’s medicine chest, with 11 big drugmakers located there, but some of the elected reps in Washington, DC, don’t always toe the line. At least that’s the complaint from the head of a local industry trade group, who carps that NJ’s congressional delegation and its two senators - most of whom are Democrats - essentially bite the hand that feeds many of their constituents.

“Historically, there has been a sense among opinion leaders that the New Jersey delegation in Congress has failed to rally around this industry, which is centered in our state,” Bob Franks, a former congressman and now president of the Health Care Institute of New Jersey, tells The Star-Ledger of New Jersey (which owns Pharmalot).

“Is that accurate? I believe you can find a significant number of votes to underscore that and a slightly smaller universe of votes to dispel it. But it is not so much voting ‘yeah’ or ‘nay’ on a particular bill as a sense New Jersey members are unwilling or are not prepared to be advocates on behalf companies that supply half the world’s medicines and employ substantial number of New Jersey workers.”

It’s not that pharma hasn’t tried to influence NJ’s congressional reps…

Take Mike Ferguson, whose Central Jersey district is home to a number of big drugmakers. The Republican received $304,000 from the industry during the last election — more than any other House member, according to federal election records. But US Sen. Bob Menendez, a Democrat, was another big beneficiary, taking in $137,000, records show. Asked about the influence, Ferguson tries to strike independent posture: “Today, I couldn’t say that the New Jersey delegation is unified in support of the industry,” he tells the paper. “There is room for improvement and I hope it will evolve over time.”

Ross Baker, a Rutgers University political science professor, doubts NJ’s congressional delegation will unify behind the industry, given the lack of enthusiasm for drugmakers from constituency groups such as seniors and organized labor. “Pharmaceutical executives tend to support Republicans, and among Democratic voter groups, the pharmaceutical industry is not popular,” he says. “This makes support of the pharmaceutical industry much more difficult, and some Democratic members of Congress have made the calculation that it is better to bash the industry than to embrace it.”

Frank Pallone, another Congressional Democrat, who heads a House Energy and Commerce health subcommittee and is often at odds with drugmakers, says every NJ lawmaker wants pharma to prosper and keep jobs in the state. But Pallone, who received less than one-fifth of the campaign donations Ferguson did from drugmakers, says there’s also a broad “public interest” to take into account, and that sometimes conflicts with the industry’s demands. The drugmakers, he says, aren’t always right, such as when they attempt to keep lower-cost generics off the market.

“They will try to make as big a profit as possible and we have to make sure they are not making excessive profits at the expense of government programs like Medicare,” Pallone tells the Ledger. “New Jersey isn’t to the pharmaceutical industry what Texas is to energy or Michigan is for the automakers. That has to do with the fact that people in New Jersey are more skeptical and lawmakers will not just support the industry because it
wants something.”

One of the big fights this year has been the attempt by the new Democratic majority in Congress to require drugmakers to negotiate with the government on prices that will be charged under Medicare Part D, which pharma adamantly opposed and views as a form of price controls. The House approved this requirement, but the legislation stalled in the Senate and President Bush has promised a veto if it ever passes.

Menendez and Frank Lautenberg, his counterpart in the Senate and also a Democrat, both voted for Medicare price negotiation, as did nine congressmen from the state. Only Ferguson and three others - all Republicans - backed the industry position.

Pharma did find sympathy from Menendez and Lautenberg earlier this year over the controversy in Thailand about patents. The pair were among five senators who wrote US Trade Rep Sue Schwab, urging her to take a tough line against Bangkok for breaking patents on several widely used meds. Schwab later added Thailand to the so-called Priority Watch list, which is reserved for countries that don’t “provide an adequate level of intellectual property rights protection or enforcement, or market access for persons relying on intellectual property protection.”