Showing posts with label stealth lobbying. Show all posts
Showing posts with label stealth lobbying. Show all posts

Sunday, July 21, 2019

A Stealth Health Policy Advocate Goes Through the Revolving Door ... Now to Chair the White House Council of Economic Advisers

In 2017, we noted that President Trump had appointed a member of his Council of Economic Advisers who previously was a master corporate stealth health policy advocate.  Now he is getting a promotion.

Prof Tomas Philipson to be Named to Chair of the President's Council of Economic Advisers

On June 29, the Washington Post reported,

President Trump plans to name economist Tomas Philipson as the next head of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, according to senior administration officials.

Philipson has worked at the White House for nearly two years as a senior economist after serving briefly on the transition team. Best known for his research on health care, Philipson has been a key player in the Trump administration’s efforts to lower drug prices and push back against Democrats’ proposals for a Medicare-for-all system.

The Post noted that during his tenure on the Council it released a report warning of the financial dangers of proposals for a national single payer health insurance system ("Medicare for all"), which is labelled "socialism."

Also, it quoted him as saying

Deregulation is the cornerstone of the president’s pro-growth economic policies that has been implemented since he took office,

The article also briefly described his "long career and academia and public service."

An article on the NPR site included this testimonial:

'Tom is a very fresh thinker,' said Mark McClellan, a veteran of the George W. Bush administration who recruited Philipson to work for him, first at the FDA and later at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. 'Tom had a great background in health economics and wanted to do work that was very policy relevant. So it was a win-win.'

A health economist as the chief White House economic adviser sounds like a good idea on its face, but the reality is much more complex.  

Philipson's Career as a Master Stealth Health Policy Advocate

In February, 2017, months before Philipson ascended to the Council, a ProPublica article noted that Philipson was "the third co-founder of Precision Health Economics" (PHE).

As we said later in 2017, PHE was in the business of using its experts' academic credentials to help pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies influence public policy in their favor. From the ProPublica article

Over the last three years, pharmaceutical companies have mounted a public relations blitz to tout new cures for the hepatitis C virus and persuade insurers, including government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, to cover the costs.

So,

To persuade payers and the public, the industry has deployed a potent new ally, a company whose marquee figures are leading economists and health care experts at the nation’s top universities. The company, Precision Health Economics, consults for three leading makers of new hepatitis C treatments: Gilead, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and AbbVie.

Furthermore,

This is just an extension of the way that the drug industry has been involved in every phase of medical education and medical research,' said Harvard Medical School professor Eric G. Campbell, who studies medical conflicts of interest. 'They are using this group of economists it appears to provide data in high-profile journals to have a positive impact on policy.'

PHE has worked with some of the biggest pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies and trade groups. In particular,
The roster includes Abbott Nutrition, AbbVie, Amgen, Biogen, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Celgene, Gilead, Intuitive Surgical, Janssen [a subsidiary of Johnson and Johnson], Merck, the National Pharmaceutical Council, Novartis, Otsuka, Pfizer, PhRMA, rEVO Biologics, Shire and Takeda.

ProPublica described some of the tactics PHE uses:

The firm participates in many aspects of a drug’s launch, both advising on 'pricing strategies' and then demonstrating the value of a drug once it comes on the market, according to its brochure. 'Led by professors at elite research universities,' the group boasts of a range of valuable services it has delivered to clients, including generating 'academic publications in the world’s leading research journals” and helping to lead “formal public debates in prestigious, closely watched forums.'

PHE has worked on campaigns to persuade the government and insurers to increase what they would pay for oncology drugs, and for Amgen's PCSK9 inhibitor (Repatha) for hypercholesterolemia.
 
Tomas Philipson was one of the principals of PHE:

Precision Health Economics may be well-positioned to influence the Trump administration. Tomas Philipson, an economist at the University of Chicago and the third co-founder of Precision Health Economics, reportedly served briefly as a senior health care adviser for the Trump transition team. He did not respond to requests for comment.

He has taken an active role in stealth health policy advocacy campaigns run by PHE.  For example, as part of the PHE campaign to advocate for generous government and commercial insurance payments for Repatha, Philipson disparaged an analysis by the Institute of Clinical and Economic Review which had suggested the drug was overpriced:

Philipson, the Precision Health Economics co-founder, and Jena wrote an op-ed in Forbes, citing the institute’s research and deriding its approach to value pricing as 'pseudo-science and voodoo economics.'


PHE and its principals, including Philipson, often failed to disclose relevant conflicts of interest.  For example, re the above Forbes article,

Only Philipson disclosed his ties to Precision Health Economics, and neither academic disclosed that Amgen was a client of the firm.

Failing to disclose the Amgen funding of their work in this context appeared deceptive.

Up to the time of his appointment to the Council of Economic Advisers, Philipson seemed to be enhancing his position at PHE.  In particular, in 2015, after PHE was bought out by a privately held biotechnology company, "Philipson ... [was] listed as chief economist and the chair of the strategy and innovation board."


However, Philipson's previous work on stealth advocacy campaigns for pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies did not prevent him from becoming a member of the Council of Economic Advisers.  Now that Philipson is likely to ascend to the chair of the Council, Philipson's previous record of stealth health policy advocacy has been anechoic.

Summary and Conclusions

The anechoic nature of this latest case shows how we are becoming numb to many common abuses in health care in the face of even worse abuses in the larger political economy, the ultimate defining down of deviancy.

Nonetheless, let me first emphasize that Philipson came through the revolving door from his role as a stealth health policy advocate to become a major Trump regime economic adviser.




We and others have said again and again that the revolving door is a species of conflict of interest. Worse, some experts have suggested that the revolving door is in fact corruption.  In particular, as we noted here, the experts from the distinguished European anti-corruption group U4 wrote,

The literature makes clear that the revolving door process is a source of valuable political connections for private firms. But it generates corruption risks and has strong distortionary effects on the economy, especially when this power is concentrated within a few firms.

In the Trump era, many people have come through the incoming revolving door, that is, people with significant leadership positions in health care corporations or related groups have attained leadership positions in government agencies whose regulations or policies could affect their former employers.  Many examples, starting with Philipson's initial appointment to the Council, appeared here.  The more people transit the revolving door from the world of big corporations to government, the more government appears rigged to do the bidding of big corporations and their  munificently paid leaders.


Furthermore,  have previously noted that promotion of health policies that allowed overheated selling of overpriced and over-hyped health care products and services included various deceptive public relations practices, including orchestrated stealth health policy advocacy campaigns.  Third party strategies used patient advocacy organizations and medical societies that had institutional conflicts of interest due to their funding from companies selling health care products and services, or to the influence of conflicted leaders and board members.  Some deceptive public relations campaigns were extreme enough to be characterized as propaganda or disinformation.

Philipson is not merely an adviser to pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.  He was an active participant and innovator in stealth health policy advocacy (or maybe stealth lobbying.)   Putting an innovator in stealth health policy advocacy and lobbying in the top economic position in the White House will only amp up the power of propagandists and disinformation purveyors in government.

Meanwhile, top health care (and other) corporate management is increasingly merging with the current administration in one giant corporatist entity which is not in the interests of health care. To derig the system, we need wholesale, real health care reform that would make health care leaders accountable for what their organizations do, and would cut the ties between government and corporate leaders and their cronies that have lead to government of, for and by corporate executives rather than the people at large.


However, before thinking about true health care reform, we need top accomplish wholesale government reform. We need to excise the deception, crime and corruption at the heart of our government and restore government by the people, of the people, and for the people. 



Wednesday, November 07, 2018

Pharmaceutical and Other Health Care Corporations Funnel Dark Money to Republicans to Defeat "Leftward" Democratic Candidates - Partisanship Trumps Social Responsibility


Introduction - Health Care Corporations Profess Social Responsibility

As we noted recently, large health corporations, which must deal with patients, health professionals, and government regulators, usually profess their social resonsibility.  For example,

Biotechnology firm Genentech, now a subsidiary of giant Swiss biotechnology and pharmaceutical company Roche, has an elaborate web page about how the company seeks to do good.  Some quotes:

we’re passionate about applying our skills, time and resources to positively impact the patients we serve, the scientific community and the places where we live and work.

Also

We approach giving back the same way we approach discovering medicines: we start by looking for the root cause of a problem and then we explore how we can contribute to a solution.

And particularly

We believe that the best work happens when everyone has a voice.

Similarly, giant American pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly espouses these core values

Three long established core values guide Lilly in all that we do:

Integrity: We conduct our business consistent with all applicable laws and are honest in our dealings with customers, employees, shareholders, partners, suppliers, competitors and the community.

Excellence: We pursue pharmaceutical innovation, provide high quality products and strive to deliver superior business results.

Respect for People: We maintain an environment built on mutual respect, openness and individual integrity. Respect for people includes our concern for all people who touch or are touched by our company: customers, employees, shareholders, partners, suppliers and communities.

Of course, in the policy arena, large health care corporations also tend to advocate for policies that are to their financial advantage.  Furthermore, top executives of large corporations have been known to donate to political candidates who favor their policy positions, although they used to consciously spread their donations out to all parties and many candidates to avoid any appearance of partisanship, while making themselves visible to whomever might be in power.

However, as the current US political chaos leads to more journalistic investigation, there is increasing evidence that large health care corporations have been secretly backing policy positions that do not correspond to their high-minded public statements about corporate social resonsibility, and are becoming quite political, even partisan in the process.  They do so through the use of dark money




Pharmaceutical Companies, Other Health Care Companies - and a Tobacco Company - Join Effort to Attack Left-Wing Politicians

On November 5, 2018, Lee Fang wrote about how big corporations, including big health care corporations, enthusiastically financially supported a dark money operation that specifically targeted "progressive" or "socialist" candidates:

Republican operatives and representatives from America’s largest business groups — alarmed at a wave of upset electoral victories by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other avowed democratic socialist candidates — have been plotting to stem the tide of left-wing Democrats sweeping the country.

Andrew Wynne, an official at the Republican State Leadership Committee, spoke to business lobby leaders in July, encouraging them not to ignore the latest trends within the Democratic Party. He called for Republicans’ allies to enact a unified plan to defeat progressives in this week’s midterm elections.

'Recent elections have proven the leftward shift,' said Wynne. 'An anti-free market, anti-business ideology has taken over the Democratic Party, particularly this year during the primaries.'

Wynne was particularly exercised about the primary victory by Democrat Alexandia Ocasio-Cortez:

'Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez captured the energy of these voters to win a congressional nomination in New York, defeating the incumbent who many thought could be the next Democratic speaker of the House,' Wynne continued.

He noted that the defeated incumbent in the Ocasio-Cortez race, Rep. Joe Crowley, a moderate Democrat and former chair of the business-friendly New Democrat Coalition, 'was someone who the business community could have a conversation with on the Democratic side.' On the other hand, Wynne warned, Ocasio-Cortez would not be so receptive to business lobbyists.

Of course, these sentiments coming from a Republican operative are not surprising.  What was surprising was how Mr Wynne wanted to fund efforts to comabt these supposedly left-wing politicians.

Officials from the Republican State Leadership Committee, which assists Republicans in capturing power on the state level, explained during the call that they expected to raise $45 million in direct contributions and $5 million to $7 million through an allied dark money group for election campaigns this fall.

The group is organized under the IRS’s 527 rules and operates in a manner similar to Super PACs: It can raise and spend unlimited amounts from individuals and corporations. The latest disclosures suggest the group is well on track to bring in significant corporate support for electing Republican state officials.

Koch Industries, Crown Cork & Seal, Genentech Inc., ExxonMobil, NextEra Energy, Range Resources, Eli Lilly and Co., Marathon Petroleum, Reynolds American, (a tobacco company which is a subsidiary of British American Tobacco), Boeing, General Motors, and Astellas Pharma are among the companies that have already provided at least $100,000 to the committee.

Many of those companies are from industries that have long contributed to GOP causes, including resource extraction, financial services, tobacco, retail, for-profit education firms, and private health care interests.

Furthermore, the Republican State Leadership Committee has been collecting money from other dark money organizations which in turn are funded in part by health care companies:

Several of the largest donors to the Republican State Leadership Committee are themselves dark money groups. The Judicial Crisis Network, a 501(c) nonprofit that does not disclose its donors, has given $1.5 million to the group. The ABC Free Enterprise Fund, a dark money affiliate of a lobbying group that represents non-union construction companies, gave $100,000.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has given $1.7 million to the committee. The chamber, notably, does not disclose its donors but has been financed in the past by Goldman Sachs and Dow Chemical, among other major American and foreign companies.

We recently discussed the health care industry contributions to the US Chamber of Commerce, which came from PhRMA, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the pharma trade association, and from specific companies, including contributions of at least $100K from: Aetna, Abbott Laboratories, AbbeVie, Amgen, Anthem, Celgene, Cigna, CVS, Eli Lilly, Express Scripts, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Mylan, Procter & Gamble, and UnitedHealth.

So a lot of big health care companies, most of whom profess their devotion to the greater community and social responsibility, have been funneling considerable money as quietly as possible into an effort to thwart one particular group of politicians, that is, candidates from the leftish wing of the Democratic party.

So much for Genetech's claim:


We believe that the best work happens when everyone has a voice.

Or for Lilly's claim:

Respect for people includes our concern for all people who touch or are touched by our company: customers, employees, shareholders, partners, suppliers and communities.
 
Discussion and Summary

This is now the fifth time we have discussed the role of dark money in health care.

- In 2012 we discussed a case of "dark money" being used to conceal sources of support for particular health policy and political positions.

- Earlier this year,  we discussed the case of huge pharmacy chain CVS,which proclaims its "social responsibility," and its policy of only making charitable contributions to improve "health and healthcare nationwide."  Yet CVS was donating to America First Policies, a supposed non-profit group devoted to promoting the partisan agenda of President Trump, including "repealing and replacing Obamacare," and immigration policies such as building the "wall" and deporting  "illegal immigrants." (Note that these CVS dark money contributions were separate from those discussed above.)

- In September, we discussed how the pharmaceutical trade organization, PhRMA, and some large drug companies donated money to a dark money organization to combat a state initiative to limit pharmaceutical prices, but also to the American Action Network (see above) to "repeal and replace" the Affordable Care Act (ACA, "Obamacare") despite their previous support for and then current neutrality on the ACA.

- In October, we discussed how many health care corporations were donating to dark money groups, predominantly groups, like the US Chamber of Commerce, devoted to distinctly right-wing causes, almost all lately related to the Republican party and in sympathy with the Donald Trump regime.

Health care corporations recent and current funding of dark money groups seems to openly conflict with the corporations' promises of social responsibility.  The slanting of these efforts towards one end of the political spectrum, one party, and now the current president suggest that these corporations may have partisan agendas.

Note that without the various ongoing investigative efforts mainly inspired by the actions of the Trump administration, we would have little idea that this was going on.

May such investigations continue and intensify.  Maybe the recent elections, which gave the opposition to the Republican party and Trump control of the US House of Representatives, will lead to more such investigations.

Furthermore, the increasing knowledge of these corporate actions raises a big question: cui bono? who benefits?

It is obvious why a pharmaceutical company, for example, might want to defeat legislation that would lower its prices.

It is not obvious why it would want to consistenly support actions by one party, or by people at one end of the political spectrum, even if some such people seem "anti-business."  After all, for years big corporations and their executives openly gave money to both US parties and their candidates, apparently in the belief that this would at least allow more visibility for the corporations' priorities no matter who was in power.

Now, the most obvious theory is that the new practice of secret donations only in right-wing, Republican, and/or pro-Trump directions, which must be orchestrated by top corporate management, and which are not disclosed to employees or smaller corporate shareholders, are likely made to support the top managers' self interest more than the broad priorities of the corporations and their various constitutencies.

Thus not only is more investigation needed, at the very least, "public" corporations ought to fully disclose all donations made to outside groups with political agendas.  This should be demanded by at least the corporations' employees and shareholders, but also by patients, health care professionals, and the public at large.

Meanwhile we are left with the suspicion that top health care corporate management is increasingly merging with the current administration in one giant corporatist entity which is not in the interests of health care, much less government by the people, of the people, and for the people.


Wednesday, October 10, 2018

The Politicization of Pharma, and Other Health Care Corporations - Walk on the Dark (Money) Side

Introduction - Health Care Corporations Profess Social Responsibility

As we noted recently, large health corporations, which deal with patients, health professionals, and government regulators, usually profess their social resonsibility.  For example,

Giant health care insurance company Aetna advertises its social corporate responsibility, including

As a health care leader, we believe that our corporate responsibility starts with helping people live healthier lives. And that means using our resources to make the communities and world we live in better places.

and,

Our social responsibility efforts encompass how we treat our employees, improve the lives of customers, and effect positive change in community health.
Similarly, giant pharmaceutical company Merck advertises its corporate social responsibility,

Corporate responsibility is at the heart of our company's mission to discover, develop and provide innovative products and services that save and improve lives. It underscores our commitment to developing and rewarding our employees, protecting the environment, and operating with the highest standards of ethics and transparency.

Of course, in the policy arena, large health care corporations also tend to advocate for policies that are to their financial advantage.  Furthermore, top executives of large corporations have been known to donate to political candidates who favor their policy positions, although they often seemed to consciously spread their donations out to avoid any appearance of partisanship.

However, as the current US political chaos leads to more journalistic investigation, there is increasing evidence that large health care corporations have been secretly backing policy positions that do not correspond to their high-minded public statements about corporate social resonsibility, and are becoming quite political, even partisan in the process.  They do so through the use of dark money






Health Care Corporations Giving to Dark Money Organizations: Dark Money Illuminated

Dark money is meant to be secret, of course.  So it is not easy to find anything out about who gives to dark money organizations, and to whom they give in turn. 
 However, recently Issue One produced a report entitled "Dark Money Illuminated." It was based on an extensive attempt to pierce the veil hiding dark money. Its introduction states:

Dark money groups hold enormous sway over what issues are, and are not, debated in Congress and on the campaign trail. But the donors behind these groups rarely discuss their motivations for bankrolling these efforts, leaving the public in the dark about who funds these increasingly prominent and potent organizations.

To attempt to get the most accurate picture of the scope of dark money influence on US politics, its authors:

reviewed FEC filings, tax returns, annual reports submitted by labor unions to the Department of Labor, documents submitted to Congress by registered lobbyists, corporate filings, press releases and other sources.

This allowed them:

to be able to identify transactions — and donors — that have never previously been associated with these dark money groups.

So they were able to identify the 15 largest dark money groups in terms of donations received, and to get data on a substantial numer of donations to them, albeit likely only a fraction of the donations to dark money groups that have been made, from 2010 to 2017.  Health care corporations turned out to be major suppliers of funding to dark money group according to this data.  The report includes a summary of the top 67 donors to dark money groups, which included:

- Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the pharmaceutical industry trade association, donated over $13 million.

- Aetna, a large for-profit health insurance company, donated over $8.5 million.

- Merck, a large pharmaceutical firm, donated over $4 million.

- Anthem, a large for-profit insurance company, donated $2 million.

Perusal of the whole data base revealed significant donations by many more health care corporations (list below includes the three companies listed above).


Aetna - $3.3 million to the American Action Network

Express Scripts - $75K to Americans for Tax Reform

American Healthcare LLC - $5K to Patriot Majority USA

Abbott Laboratories  - $500K to US Chamber of Commerce (USCC)

AbbeVie - $250K to USCC

Aetna - $5.3M to USCC

Allergan - $55K to USCC

Amgen - $302K to USCC

Anthem - $2M to USCC

Celgene - $262.5K to USCC

Cigna - $325K to USCC

CVS - $825K to USCC

Eli Lilly - $350K to USCC

Express Scripts - $150K to USCC

Gilead - $13K to USCC

Johnson & Johnson - $475K to USCC

Merck - $4.4M to USCC

Mylan - $210K to USCC

Procter & Gamble - $500K to USCC

UnitedHealth - $252K to USCC

Zimmer Biomet - $75K to USCC

Where Does the Money Go?

As is evident above, health care companies donated to a limited number of the big 15 dark money organizations, the American Action Network, Americans for Tax Reform, Patriot Majority USA, but mostly the US Chamber of Commerce.

The first two organizations were all identified by Issue One as affiliated with right-wing / Republican/ pro-Trump causes.

American Action Network

the American Action Network was not publicly rolled out by high-profile Republicans until February 2010 — one month after the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision.
The self-described 'action tank' was founded by veteran Republican fundraiser Fred Malek, the former Marriott Hotels president and CEO who has helped raise campaign cash for a number of GOP presidential candidates over the years.

Former Republican Sen. Norm Coleman of Minnesota served as the American Action Network’s first CEO and is still the chairman of the organization’s board of directors.

Brian Walsh — the former political director for the National Republican Congressional Committee who helped Republicans win control of the U.S. House of Representatives in 2010 — served as the president of the American Action Network between 2011 and 2015.

The group’s current executive director is Corry Bliss, who managed Ohio Republican Sen. Rob Portman’s successful re-election campaign in 2016.  


Americans for Tax Reform

Originally founded in July 1985 to promote President Ronald Reagan’s proposal for tax reform, Americans for Tax Reform remains a powerful lobbying organization today that also frequently spends money in elections to aid Republican candidates. The group’s founder and president is Grover Norquist, a conservative activist who once boasted that his goal was to get government 'down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.'

In 1994, Norquist was one of the co-authors of the 'Contract with America,' the campaign platform that helped the GOP win control of the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time in more than forty years and helped elevate Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-GA), another co-author, to the position of Speaker of the House.

Americans for Tax Reform’s primary advocacy tool is its 'Taxpayer Protection Pledge,' which asks politicians at the local, state and national level to “make a written commitment to oppose any and all tax increases.”

The third group, to which only one donor gave only $5K, was identified with Democratic / left-wing causes.

Patriot Majority USA

Patriot Majority USA, a 501(c)(4) 'social welfare' organization that often spends money in elections to aid Democratic candidates, was founded in March 2011 by political consultant Craig Varoga, a Democrat with strong ties to former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV). To wit: Varoga led an independent group that helped Reid win his contentious re-election race in 2010.

The fourth organization, the one to which most of the health care corporate donors gave the most money, is in a class of its own.  The Issue One description of it was

US Chamber of Commerce

the U.S. Chamber of Commerce ranks as one of the nation’s largest and most powerful lobbying groups, with an ornate headquarters in Washington, D.C., just a block from the White House.

A trade association organized under Section 501(c)(6) of the tax code, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce mostly endorses Republican candidates, although it occasionally supports business-friendly Democrats. The group says it represents more than 3 million businesses across the country and has a membership of approximately 300,000.

The USCC has received much - probably unwanted - publicity about its efforts to help President Trump's controversial nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.  An October 4, 2018, article in the Intercept included:

Business groups with interests before the U.S. Supreme Court have orchestrated a multifaceted campaign to pressure the Senate to swiftly confirm Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the nation’s highest court. The advocacy reaches across the influence economy of Washington, D.C., with the largest corporate lobbying groups and billionaires working in concert with Republican operatives to elevate Kavanaugh to a lifetime posting atop the judiciary.

Few businesses, however, have stamped their names on the effort. Most major corporations and wealthy donors are instead using 501(c) nonprofit groups that do not require donor transparency to air upward of $15 million in reported advertising spending in order to convince the public to support Kavanaugh’s nomination. Other conservative groups contributing to the ad war have not disclosed how much they are spending, likely bringing the total much higher.

Among the groups publicly campaigning for Kavanaugh to be confirmed are the giants of pro-business lobbying — organizations like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Koch brothers-funded Americans for Prosperity. Lesser-known, business-funded political groups, such as the Republican Attorneys General Association, are also spearheading campaigns.

The article also said this specifically about the US Chamber of Commerce

The powerful lobby announced in August that it would mobilize support for Kavanaugh, claiming it would score support for Kavanaugh as a 'key vote' in evaluating members of Congress. The Chamber spends tens of millions of dollars every election cycle against lawmakers who cross them on major votes.

One wonders whether patients or health care professionals who must deal with large health care corporations have any idea that these companies are promoting partisian causes, mostly right-wing/ Republican/ pro-Trump causes?  One wonders whether the employees and small stockholders of these corporations likewise have any idea about this?

Summary and Discussion

This is now the fourth time we have discussed the role of dark money in health care.  In 2012 we discussed a case of "dark money" being used to conceal sources of support for particular health policy and political positions.  Earlier this year,  we discussed the case of huge pharmacy chain CVS,which proclaims its "social responsibility," and its policy of only making charitable contributions to improve "health and healthcare nationwide."  Yet CVS was donating to America First Policies, a supposed non-profit group devoted to promoting the partisan agenda of President Trump, including "repealing and replacing Obamacare," and immigration policies such as building the "wall" and deporting  "illegal immigrants." (Note that these CVS dark money contributions were separate from those discussed above.)  Ten days ago we discussed how the pharmaceutical trade organization, PhRMA, and some large drug companies donated money to a dark money organization to combat a state initiative to limit pharmaceutical prices, but also to the American Action Network (see above) to "repeal and replace" the Affordable Care Act (ACA, "Obamacare") despite their previous support for and then current neutrality on the ACA.

Now it appears that health care corporations often donate large amounts to dark money organizations, and as best as we can tell now, nearly all the donations and all the money go to organizations that support right-wing/ Republican/ and now pro-Trump causes.  Many of these causes seem to openly conflict with the corporations' promises of social responsibility.  The slanting of these efforts towards one end of the political spectrum, one party, and now the current president suggest that these corporations may have partisan agendas.

Note that without the various ongoing investigative efforts mainly inspired by the actions of the Trump administration, we would have little idea that this was going on.

I hope that such investigations continue.

Furthermore, the increasing knowledge of these corporate actions raises a big question: cui bono? who benefits?

It is obvious why a pharmaceutical company, for example, might want to defeat legislation that would lower its prices.

It is not obvious why it would want to consistenly support actions by one party, or by people at one end of the political spectrum.

The obvious hypothesis is that these donations, which must be orchestrated by top corporate management, and which are not disclosed to employees or smaller corporate shareholders, are likely made to support the top managers' self interest.

Thus not only is more investigation needed, at the very least, "public" corporations ought to fully disclose all donations made to outside groups with political agendas.  This should be demanded by at least the corporations' employees and shareholders, but also by patients, health care professionals, and the public at large.

Meanwhile we are left with the suspicion that top health care corporate management is increasingly merging with the current administration in one giant corporatist entity which is not in the interests of health care, much less government by the people, of the people, and for the people. 

===

Musical interlude: "On the Dark Side," Eddie and the Cruisers




Sunday, September 30, 2018

Pharma's Dark Money: Touting Corporate Responsibility and Non-Partisanship, But Using Dark Money to Promote Self-Serving Policies and Partisan Causes

Health Care Corporations Promote Their Social Responsibility

The US health care system's extreme dsyfnctionality is now a cliche.  So it's no wonder that everyone seems to want to make things better.  Big health care corporations in particular tout their socially responsible ideas for health care reform.

For example, PhRMA, the trade organization for drug and biotechnology firms, describes its mission thus:

PhRMA is committed to advancing public policies in the United States and around the world that support innovative medical research, yield progress for patients today and provide hope for the treatments and cures of tomorrow.


Amgen states simply its mission is "to serve patients."

Biogen published a "Corporate Citizenship Report" which included

our commitment [is] to positively impact our communities, to inspire the next generation of scientists, to solve social and environmental challenges and to create a diverse and inclusive workforce that thrives professionally and personally.

Giant pharmaceutical/ biotechnology/ device company Johnson & Johnson has its famous "credo" which starts with

We believe our first responsibility is to the doctors, nurses and patients, to mothers and fathers and all others who use our products and services.

Furthermore,

We are responsible to the communities in which we live and work and to the world community as well. We must be good citizens – support good works and charities and bear our fair share of taxes. We must encourage civic improvements and better health and education.

 
With all that positivity supporting better health care, one would think that health care dysfunction should be soon gone. But maybe under all this talk about corporate responsibility lies something darker.

An Early Case of Dark Money in Health Care




Back in 2012 we discussed a case of "dark money" being used to conceal sources of support for particular health policy and political positions.  The case was of the Center for Protection of Patient Rights, an obscure group whose mission was to "protect the rights of patients to choose and use medical care providers."  The CPPR financed the US Health Freedom Coalition, led by Dr Eric Novack, which received nearly its entire budget — $1.7 million — from the center to help pass a state ballot measure that aimed to block President Obama's healthcare overhaul.  The Center ultimately transferred $55 million to Republican candidates in the 2010 election.  Its money came from the equally obscure Americans for Job Security, and was conveyed by groups such as the American Future Fund. The people who gave the money to the Americans for Job Security remained unknown, save for one wealthy Alaskan "landowner."  

Do Health Care Corporations Put Their Money Where Their Mouths Are?


This year, we discussed the case of huge pharmacy chain CVS,which proclaims its "social responsibility," and its policy of only making charitable contributions to improve "health and healthcare nationwide."  Yet CVS was donating to America First Policies, a supposed non-profit group devoted to promoting the partisan agenda of President Trump, including "repealing and replacing Obamacare," and immigration policies such as building the "wall" and deporting  "illegal immigrants."  America First Policies appears to be yet another dark money organization.  CVS only decided to stop contributing when journalists revealed that America First Policies staffer had made flagrantly racist and pro-Nazi comments.

This suggested that it is possible that health care corporations which promote themselves as socially responsible and non-partisan may actually be secretly promoting political agendas that might shock some of their consumers and/or patients, employees, and health care professionals who must deal with them. 


We have  now found some more cases that reinforce this suspicion, showing how pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies have funneled funds through more "dark money" organizations to support policies that do not fit so well with the image they want to convey.

The PhRMA Backed Dark Money Campaign Against an Ohio Initiative to Control Drug Pricing

In August, 2017, the International Business Times revealed how the pharmaceutical/ biotchnology industry had set out to defeat a 2017 Ohio initiative meant to hold down drug prices without revealing who was funding it.

PhRMA had already succesfully defeated a similar initiative in California in 2016.  However, industry support for this campaign, while obscure, was not a secret. 


PhRMA set up ... Californians Against the Misleading Rx Ballot Measure, which raised over $111 million for its campaign against a California initiative that ... would have blocked that state from paying higher drug prices than those negotiated by the Veterans Affairs Department. The trade group set up a political action committee in California to which pharma companies donated directly — so PhRMA had to disclose these donors. Merck, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson gave over $9 million each; Amgen gave $7.6 million; and 19 other drug companies gave $1 million or more. The PhRMA-run committee spent nearly all of the millions it raised, and the measure failed to pass, with 53 percent of voters shooting it down. All donors except for Genentech and Gilead Sciences are PhRMA members, and only a handful of companies out of more than 30 total corporate donors are headquartered in California.

Somehow, with all the news coming out about the 2016 US elections, this generated little interest.  However, in Ohio in 2017, PhRMA was able to do something similar while keeping the corporate sources of the money hidden.  Their target was:

Issue 2, the Ohio Drug Price Relief Act — a citizen-initiated ballot measure designed to prevent state agencies, including the state Department of Medicaid, from purchasing drugs at rates any higher than the lowest amount paid by the federal Department of Veterans Affairs, which negotiates with drug companies and saves between 20 and 24 percent on drug costs.

This time:

Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the biggest trade organization in the U.S. representing major drug companies, created a political action committee on May 1 called Ohioans Against the Deceptive Rx Ballot Issue. On the same day, PhRMA also founded a limited liability corporation of the same name and registered at the same address; under normal circumstances, it would not be required to disclose its donors. Campaign finance reports document only one donor to the ballot measure committee: the linked LLC.

So contributions from corporate donors to the LLC to financeed the political action committee were concealed.  So,

'Certainly, setting up an LLC to launder drug company money into fighting the ballot measure looks like an effort to evade Ohio's transparency and disclosure laws,' Brendan Fischer, director of federal and Federal Election Commission reform at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center, told International Business Times in an email.

Also,

The Campaign Legal Center contends that hiding donors this way at the federal level violates the Federal Elections Campaign Act, which prohibits 'straw donors.'

There were only two flies in the ointment.  Two companies did disclose donations to the LLC:

According to the Columbus Dispatch, California-based Amgen gave $6.3 million from 2016 through June 2017, and Biogen, headquartered in Massachusetts, gave $1.5 million last year. This accounts for roughly half of the $15.8 million total that PhRMA’s LLC raised in just May and June to fight Issue 2.
Who donated the rest, amounting to some $58 million, remains unknown.  And the effort to defeat Issue 2 was succesful, as reported by Cleveland.com in November, 2017.

Issue 2 also now holds the distinction of being the most expensive ballot issue in state history, with more than $74 million raised over the course of three years, topping the $64.4 million spent on Issue 6 in 2008, which sought permission for a casino in Wilmington, Ohio. Issue 6 also failed at the ballot.

Big Pharma accounted for more than $58 million of the total raised.

Furthermore,

Because the drug companies passed the money through a limited liability company created with the intention of funneling cash to the opposition campaign, it's currently impossible to tell which companies actively spent money combating the initiative in Ohio.

A proponent of Issue 2 charged:

'The onslaught, the bombardment of television advertising that was misleading, lying and negative led to tremendous confusion,' he said.

Uncertainty from the public about the effects of the bill coupled with the ugliness of the campaign likely led to Issue 2's defeat. Voters were often confused and felt both sides were of zero help in explaining the issue.

And by August 25, 2018, the Columbus Dispatch reported that all legal compaints against the PhRMA dark money campaign were dismissed.

Think of the campaign to defeat Issue 2 as a proof of the concept that health care corporations can finance campaigns against policy measures using dark money organizations to hide their support.

But no one would be surprised to find out that pharmaceutical companies were against a policy measure that would restrict the prices they charge.  Our next case shows how the dark money ruse can be used by corporations to support partisan policies that conflict with their proclaimed social responsibility and non-partisan nature.  

The PhRMA Backed Dark Money Campaign to "Repeal and Replace" the Affordable Care Act (ACA)

Investigative journalism from Kaiser Health News appeared in the New York Times and the Washington Post in late July, 2018 showing how PhRMA again used dark money, but this time to advocate for "repealing and replacing" the Affordable Care Act (known informally as "Obamacare"), which PhRMA had previously supported, and about which it was then ostensibly neutral.  The article began,

In 2010, before the Affordable Care Act was passed by Congress, the pharmaceutical industry’s top lobbying group was a very public supporter of the measure. It even helped fund a multimillion-dollar TV ad campaign backing passage of the law.

But last year, when Republicans mounted an aggressive effort to repeal the law, the group made a point of staying outside the fray. 'We’ve not taken a position,' Stephen Ubl, head of the organization, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, known as PhRMA, said in an interview in March 2017.

This was deceptive.

That stance, however, was at odds with its financial support of another group, the American Action Network, which was heavily involved in the effort to repeal the act, often referred to as Obamacare. The network spent an estimated $10 million on an ad campaign designed to build voter support for its elimination.

'Urge him to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act now,' one ad running in early 2017 advised viewers to tell their congressman. That and similar material (including robocalls) paid for by the American Action Network ran numerous times last year in 75 congressional districts.

PhRMA was one of AAN’s biggest donors the previous year, giving it $6.1 million, federal regulatory filings show. And PhRMA had a substantial interest in the outcome of the repeal efforts. Among other actions, the Republican-backed health bill would have eliminated a fee the companies pay the federal government, one estimated at $28 billion over a decade.

But there was no way the public could have known at the time about PhRMA’s support of the network or the identity of other deep-pocketed financiers behind the group.

The KHN report went on to explain how this works

Unlike groups receiving its funds, PhRMA and similar nonprofits must report the grants in their own Internal Revenue Service filings. But the disclosures don’t occur until months or sometimes more than a year after the donation.

The conservative-leaning AAN has become one of the most prominent nonprofits for routing what is known as dark money — difficult-to-trace funds behind TV ads, phone calls, grass-roots organizing and other investments used to influence politics. Such groups have thrived since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010, which loosened rules for corporate political spending, and amid what critics say is nonexistent policing of remaining rules by the I.R.S.

Generally speaking, dark-money groups are politically active organizations, often nonprofit, that, under I.R.S. regulations, are not required to disclose the identities of their donors.

Such groups are often chartered under Section 501(c)(4) of the tax law, which grants a tax exemption to 'social welfare organizations.' For those seeking to influence politics but stay in the background, 501(c)(4) designations offer two big advantages: tax exemption and no requirement to disclose donors.
The AAN seems to be an obviously partisan, right-wing, pro-Republican group.

PhRMA’s $6.1 million, unrestricted donation to AAN was its single-biggest grant in 2016, dwarfing its $130,000 contribution to the same group the year before. Closely associated with House Republicans — AAN has a former Republican senator and two former Republican House members on its board — the group backed the failed G.O.P. health bill intended to replace the Affordable Care Act. It also supported the successful Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, which reduced corporate taxes by hundreds of billions of dollars over a decade.

So far in this election cycle, AAN has given more than $19 million to the Congressional Leadership Fund, a Republican super PAC with which it shares an address and staff, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The fund recently ran ads opposing Democratic candidates in high-profile special congressional elections in Georgia and Pennsylvania.

In fact, PhRMA made a variety of contributions to dark money groups associated with right-wing and/or Republican party backed causes, while it presumably maintained a non-partisan public stance.

PhRMA gave nearly $10 million in 2016 to politically active groups, including AAN, that do not have to disclose donors, its most recent filing with the I.R.S. shows. By contrast, PhRMA and its political action committee made only about $1 million in political donations in 2015 and 2016 that were disclosed to regulators and reported by the Center for Responsive Politics.

PhRMA’s 2016 political activities included support for the Republican National Convention. Rather than directly support the Cleveland convention, which several companies pulled out of after it became clear that Mr. Trump was going to be the nominee, PhRMA routed $150,000 through limited liability companies with names like Convention Services 2016 and Friends of the House 2016.

Like 501(c)(4)s, LLCs do not have to disclose their donors. PhRMA’s support was revealed in I.R.S. filings more than a year later. (Donations by PhRMA and other groups to Friends of the House, which financed a luxury lounge for convention dignitaries, were first reported by the Center for Public Integrity last fall.)

PhRMA’s surge in donations to AAN coincides with the arrival of Mr. Ubl, who took over as president and chief executive in 2015 and has longstanding ties to Norm Coleman, a former United States senator from Minnesota who is now the network’s chairman. Mr. Ubl once ran the lobby for manufacturers of knee implants, heart stents and other medical devices, one of which, Medtronic, is based in Minneapolis.

Also,

PhRMA’s 2016 dark-money contributions included $150,000 to Americans for Prosperity, a conservative group associated with the billionaires Charles and David Koch. Their group has already signaled it will be active in November’s elections, running attack ads against Senator Jon Tester, a vulnerable Montana Democrat, for not supporting a repeal of the Affordable Care Act.

PhRMA also gave $50,000 to Americans for Tax Reform, run by the conservative anti-tax activist Grover Norquist.

In contrast, PhRMA gave lesser amounts to groups identified as centrist or left-leaning.

Mostly smaller amounts went to centrist and liberal groups. Center Forward, which claims to seek bipartisan, common ground on drug policy and other issues, received $300,000 directly from PhRMA and another $179,000 from a PhRMA-backed group called the Campaign for Medical Discovery, according to tax filings.

And the groups to which they donated were also pursuing narrower issues that supported the industry's economic interests, not broadly partisan (and in this case, prro-Democratic) issues. For example,

Center Forward worked to preserve a tax credit for researching rare-disease medicines known as orphan drugs. PhRMA took a similar stance, encouraging Congress “to maintain incentives” for rare-disease drugs.

The KHN article noted that there is evidence that individaul pharmaceutical companies hide their political advocacy, possibly mainly their advocacy of right-wing and/or Republican backed causes, in similar ways.

Johnson & Johnson gave $35,000 that year to the Republican Main Street Partnership, a 501(c)(4) that describes itself as a coalition of lawmakers committed to 'conservative, pragmatic government,' the C.P.A. data shows.

But the center’s research also shows that many pharmaceutical companies don’t disclose donations made to 501(c)(4) organizations, nor are they legally required to do so.

Corporations 'could dump millions into one of these (c)(4)s and nobody would ever know where it came from,' said Steven Billet, a former AT&T lobbyist who teaches political action committee management at George Washington University.

Summary and Discussion

So in three cases, health care corporations, and/or their trade associations, made significant financial contributions to dark money organizations, thus avoiding reporting of such fund transfers.  In two cases, these fund transfers went to organizations with clearly partisan, right-wing, pro-Republican and/or pro-Trump agendas.  Yet the corporations and their trade association had publicly committed themselves to social responsibility, putting patients and health care ahead of all other concerns, and had never advertised themselves as partisan, explicitly politically conservative, and/or Republican.

This is a new dimension of stealth health policy advocacy or stealth lobbying.  Most of the previous, at least pre-2016 campaign, examples we had found of these involved corporations promoting measures that would improve their revenue (and consequently their top managements' pay).  They did not involve explicitly siding with a single political party or political philosophy.

Patients, consumers, health care professionals, and the public at large might not be pleased but would probably not be too suprised that health care corporations and their management pursue financial self-interest, but prefer doing so without much publicity.  However, I suspect most people would be unpleanatly shocked to find out that well-known health care corporations have been actively siding with a single political party and that party's ostensible political philosophy, but keeping that support very quiet.

Since such dark money support is by definition secret, who knows how many health care organizations have been doing this?

As an aside, I wonder if this hidden support from large corporations has pushed one political party to more extreme actions despite such actions' popular disfavor?  But that is for more politically attuned people to ponder.

In any case, as we have said again and again,...

There are myriad ways corporate and political insiders push health policy agendas because of self-interest, regardless of their effects on patients' and the public's health.  Health policy in the US has become an insiders' game.  Unless it is redirected to reflect patients' and the public's health, facilitated by the knowledge of unbiased clinical and policy experts rather than corporate public relations, expect our efforts at health care reform to just increase health care dysfunction. 

Physicians, public health advocates, whatever unbiased health policy experts remain must educate the public about how health policy has been turned into a corporate sandbox.  We must try to somehow activate the public to call for health care policy of the people, by the people, and for the people.

Wednesday, March 28, 2018

How Do We Counter Health Care Disinformation Under a Disinformer-in-Chief?

"Don't worry, things could be worse.  And sure enough, things got worse."

Disinformation in Medicine and Health Care

Stealthy, deceptive systematic marketing, lobbying, and policy advocacy campaigns on behalf of big health care organizations, often pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device companies, have long been a subject of Health Care Renewal.  A relatively recently revealed example was the stealth marketing campaign used by GlaxoSmithKline to sell its antidepressant Paxil.  This campaign included manipulating and suppressing clinical research, bribing physicians to prescribe the drug, use of key opinion leaders as disguised marketers, and manipulation of continuing medical education.  Other notable examples included Johnson and Johnson's campaign to sell Risperdal (look here),  and the infamous Pfizer campaign to sell Neurontin (look here and here).   Notably, stealth marketing seemed to be one reason for the growing popularity of narcotics (opioids) starting in the 1990s (look here).

The organization and complexity of stealth marketing, lobbying and policy advocacy campaigns have often been sufficient to characterize them as disinformation.  For example, we characterized the campaign by commercial health insurance companies to derail the Clinton administration's attempt at health reform in the 1990s, as described by Wendell Potter in his book, Deadly Spin, as just that (look here).  The tactics employed in that campaign included: use of front groups and third parties (useful idiots?); use of spies; distractions to make important issues anechoic; message discipline; and entrapment (double-think).

Many of the stealth marketing campaigns we discussed came to light through regulatory and law enforcement action.  For example, the public was made aware of the GSK stealth marketing of Paxil due to Eliot Spitzer's prosecution in 2004 (documented in Side Effects by Alison Bass).  Ultimately, that campaign resulted in a settlement including a multi-billion dollar fine in 2012 (look here).

So we have long advocated better awareness of these insidious disinformation campaigns, and more vigorous regulatory and law-enforcement action against them.   Thus we were aghast in 2017 when a accomplished stealth  health care marketer transited the revolving door to wind up in a top federal position, on the President's Council of Economic Advisors (look here).

That was bad.  Worse, now it appears that the disinformers are in charge of all regulation and law-enforcement.

Disinformation at the Heart of the Current President's Election Campaign

Cambridge Analytica's Appropriated Facebook Data

Less than 10 days ago, the New York Times broke a complex story about the disinformation campaign at the heart of the Trump presidential campaign in 2016.  The campaign used

private information from the Facebook profiles of more than 50 million users without their permission, according to former Cambridge employees, associates and documents, making it one of the largest data leaks in the social network’s history. The breach allowed the company to exploit the private social media activity of a huge swath of the American electorate, developing techniques that underpinned its work on President Trump’s campaign in 2016.

Note that

The data Cambridge collected from profiles, a portion of which was viewed by The Times, included details on users’ identities, friend networks and 'likes.' Only a tiny fraction of the users had agreed to release their information to a third party.

Thus the campaign was based on inappropriately and unethically accessed, that is, hacked data from millions of people.  Such data hacking may prove to be illegal (see below). 

PsyOps

According to a companion article in the Guardian, Cambridge Analytica was linked to and its work based on that of a company called SCL Group,

one of whose subsidiaries, SCL Elections, would go on to create Cambridge Analytica (an incorporated venture between SCL Elections and Robert Mercer, funded by the latter). For all intents and purposes, SCL/Cambridge Analytica are one and the same.

Notably, SCL Group's

expertise was in 'psychological operations' – or psyops – changing people’s minds not through persuasion but through 'informational dominance', a set of techniques that includes rumour, disinformation and fake news.

Per the NY Times, Christopher Wylie, who blew the whistle on Cambridge Analytica et al,

said of its leaders: 'Rules don’t matter for them. For them, this is a war, and it’s all fair.'

'They want to fight a culture war in America,' he added. 'Cambridge Analytica was supposed to be the arsenal of weapons to fight that culture war.'
Per NPR, Wylie later told a UK parliamentary committee

Donald Trump makes it click in your head that this has a much wider impact. I don't think that military-style information operations is conducive for any democratic process.

Furthermore,

They don't care whether or not what they do is legal as long as it gets the job done
Thus it seems pretty clear that Cambridge Analytica/ SCL were in the disinformation business, and were happy to use various tactics, probably unethical and some likely illegal, to accomplish psychological operations to manipulate their subjects.

Overlaps with Trump Campaign

The company leveraged the unauthorized Facebook data:

Under the guidance of Brad Parscale, Mr. Trump’s digital director in 2016 and now the campaign manager for his 2020 re-election effort, Cambridge performed a variety of services, former campaign officials said. That included designing target audiences for digital ads and fund-raising appeals, modeling voter turnout, buying $5 million in television ads and determining where Mr. Trump should travel to best drum up support.

Note that Cambridge Analytica was run by some of Mr Trump's closest associates, including Steve Bannon, a Cambridge Analytica board member, who became Trump's third campaign director, and then a top White House strategic advisor, and Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah, investors and board members, who were notable Trump donors and gurus of related political causes. Although the firm first attached itself to the campaign of Ted Cruz, after that lost steam,  according to a Washington Post article

the Mercers switched their allegiance to Trump and pitched their services to Trump’s digital director, Brad Parscale. The company’s hiring was approved by Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who was informally helping to manage the campaign with a focus on digital strategy.

Kushner said in an interview with Forbes magazine that the campaign 'found that Facebook and digital targeting were the most effective ways to reach the audiences. . . .We brought in Cambridge Analytica.' Kushner said he 'built;' a data hub for the campaign 'which nobody knew about, until towards the end.'
 Thus the Cambridge Analytica/ SCL disinformation campaign, built on hacked data, was done in the service of the Trump campaign, and with apparent full knowledge, acquiesecence, and sometimes active cooperation of top campaign leaders.  Mr Trump, of course, was ultimately responsible for the actions of his campaign, although none of the reporting so far speaks to his day-to-day participation in the Cambridge Analytica/ SCL disinformation campaign.


A Platform Built on Manipulated Emotion

It appears that the campaign used a variety of disinformation techniques.  It is striking that these techniques were ultimately used to push themes and policies that Cambridge Analytica/ SCL had developed prior to their involvement with Trump, not merely the themes and policies that Trump and his advisers had devised.  Furthermore, these  themes and policy positions later used by the Trump campaign were based not on ideology or policy research, but on the hidden fears and resentments of people assessed by Cambridge Analytica in its "psychographic" analysis campaign. Again, according to the Washington Post article,

The data and analyses that Cambridge Analytica generated in this time provided discoveries that would later form the emotionally charged core of Trump’s presidential platform, said Wylie, whose disclosures in news reports over the past several days have rocked both his onetime employer and Facebook.

'Trump wasn’t in our consciousness at that moment; this was well before he became a thing,' Wylie said. 'He wasn’t a client or anything.'

The year before Trump announced his presidential bid, the data firm already had found a high level of alienation among young, white Americans with a conservative bent.

Furthermore, a later Washington Post article stated,

Cambridge Analytica used that information, together with insights gained from focus groups with angry Americans, to identify issues and target voters. Bannon supplied the ideological focus of wanting to remake America and billionaire Robert Mercer provided the money. Neither Bannon nor Mercer has publicly commented since the allegations emerged.


Then,

'One of the things that started to emerge was that we literally heard these sort of narratives about Washington as something that was, like, gross and disgusting, that was dirty,' Wylie said.

So his team tested the phrase 'drain that swamp' to see if people would respond to it on social media. After all, they had access to the data of millions of Facebook users without their knowledge.

And people responded. Through the internet and Trump’s speeches, the slogan became one of the campaign’s most identifiable soundbites.

Perhaps it is the idea of building a wall along the Mexican border that best illustrates Wylie’s work for Cambridge Analytica.

Bannon, Wylie said, was obsessed with the idea of separating the U.S. from the rest of the world so the country can rediscover itself. Trump’s campaign for a wall along the Mexican border is not really about stopping immigrants, Wylie said.

'It’s to embody separation,' he said. 'If you can embody that separation and you can further distance in the minds of Americans us here in America and them elsewhere, even if it is just across a river, or just across a desert, then you have won that culture war.'
So "drain the swamp" was not a catch phrase for fighting corruption, but a hook to deep-seated fears of contamination, and "build the wall" was not a policy position to literally build a physical wall, but a hook to deep-seated fears of otherness.  Yet in office Mr Trump has continued to use these slogans as if they were policy positions, and has remained fixated on building a physical wall.  As we discussed here, there is plenty of evidence that he has fostered, not fought corruption. 


Use of "Proxy Organizations"

Great Britain's Channel 4 interviewed Mr Nix, the CEO of Cambridge Analytica, posing as potential clients. As reported by the Guardian,

Turnbull said the company sometimes used 'proxy organisations', including charities and activist groups, to help disseminate the messages – and keep the company’s involvement in the background.

Use of proxies and third parties are commonly used disinformation tactics.



Questions of Illegality

Claims of Impunity

During the Channel 4 undercover interview, Mr Nix claimed impunity,

When the undercover reporter expressed worries that American authorities might seize on details of a dirty campaign, Nix said the US had no jurisdiction over Cambridge Analytica, even though the company is American and is registered in Delaware.

'I’m absolutely convinced that they have no jurisdiction,' he told the purported client. 'So if US authorities came asking for information, they would simply refuse to collaborate. 'We’ll say: none of your business.''

Maybe his beliefs in impunity facilitated his comfort with the use of some apparently illegal tactics.

Violation of UK Data Privacy Laws


The UK has stringent laws on data privacy.  Its Information Commissioner's Office is apparently actively investigating whether Cambridge Analytica/ SCL violated them.  Late last week, the Guardian reported  

Investigators from Britain’s data watchdog have spent nearly seven hours searching the London offices of Cambridge Analytica.

Eighteen enforcement officers entered the Cambridge Analytica headquarters in London’s West End on Friday night to search the premises after the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) was granted a warrant to examine its records.

The officials concluded the search at about 3am on Saturday.
According to CBS News, at least three US states are now investigating whether the company broke US laws by accessing the Facebook data.

Work on a US Campaign by Foreign Nationals

As implied above, Cambridge Analytica and SCL were basically UK operations.  A Guardian article noted the apparent illegality of involvement in US political campaigns by foreign nationals.  The organization's own lawyers warned its leaders that

'Any decision maker must be a US citizen or green card holder,' the memo, seen by the Observer, warned. It also provided a brief legal history of cases involving foreign involvement in election campaigns, drawn up by a lawyer at the firm founded by former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani.

So,

It was clear that as a company largely run and staffed by Britons and Canadians, apart from Bannon and Mercer at the top, Cambridge Analytica – which was to go on to work on Donald’s Trump presidential election campaign – had a looming problem.

The management's response appeared to be subterfuge.

Two employees confirmed that they were still answering ultimately to Nix throughout the mid-term election campaigns that ended in November 2014. In total, more than a dozen foreigners, including Britons and Canadians, filled strategic roles in campaigns across the US.

'We were really speaking directly to the voters in a number of states,' said one former employee, who served on a team with several people who were not US citizens or green card holders.

It is understood that some were working on tourist visas. Another ex-employee claimed that they had been provided with letters to give to US border control officials where needed, stating that they would not be working there.

It seems likely that the Cambridge Analytica/ SCL work for the Trump campaign was mainly accomplished by citizens of countries other than the US.

Coordination with PACs

 Great Britain's Channel 4 interviewed Mr Nix, the CEO of Cambridge Analytica, posing as potential clients. As reported by the Guardian, not only did he boast of his influence in the Trump campaign,

Senior managers then appeared to suggest that in their work for US clients, there was planned division of work between official campaigns and unaffiliated 'political action groups'.

That could be considered coordination – which is not allowed under US election law. The firm has denied any wrongdoing. Also,

In another exchange, Tayler describes an apparently planned division of spending on the campaign trail, with the candidate organising positive' messages, with negative attack ads left to the super Pacs, which may engage in unlimited political spending independently of the campaigns.

'As part of it, sometimes you have to separate it from the political campaign itself ... campaigns are normally subject to limits about how much money they can raise. Whereas outside groups can raise an unlimited amount.'

'So the campaign will use their finite resources for things like persuasion and mobilisation and then they leave the ‘air war’ they call it, like the negative attack ads to other affiliated groups.'

Note that,

The Campaign Legal Center has accused Cambridge Analytica over allegations of illegal coordination of this nature.

It has filed evidence with the FEC alleging that the super Pac Make America Number 1 made illegal contributions to Trump’s campaign, 'engaging in unlawful coordinated spending by using the common vendor Cambridge Analytica'.

Boasts of Greater Nefariousness

Great Britain's Channel 4 interviewed Mr Nix, the CEO of Cambridge Analytica, posing as potential clients.  As reported by the NY Times, he boasted that the organization had capabilities more nefarious than those above:

We can set up fake IDs and websites, we can be students doing research projects attached to a university, we can be tourists. There’s so many options we can look at.

He also mentioned apparent extortion:

But you know equally effective can be just to go and speak to the incumbents and to offer them a deal that’s too good to be true, and make sure that that’s video-recorded, you know. These sorts of tactics are very effective, instantly having video evidence of corruption, putting it on the internet, these sorts of things.

Finally, he discussed apparent extortion in the form of classic KGB style honey-traps.

Or, Mr. Nix said, they could 'send some girls around to the candidate’s house — we have lots of history of things'

The reporter asked what kind of girls, and Mr. Nix said they could find some Ukrainian women. 'I’m just saying, we could bring some Ukrainians in on holiday with us you know,” Mr. Nix replied. “You know what I’m saying.'

'They are very beautiful,' he said. 'I find that works very well.'

Whether Cambridge Analytica/ SCL actually undertook such activities, particularly on behalf of the Trump campaign, is unknown.  However, their leadership clearly had no qualms about considering them to be options.


Discussion

An international organization, Cambridge Analytica/ SCL based in the UK, led by Trump confidantes including his last campaign leader and former White House strategic adviser Steve Bannon, and major Republican donors and hedge fund magnates Robert and Rebekah Mercer, worked with the Trump 2016 campaign, particularly coordinating with digital coordinator Brad Parscale.  Cambridge Analytica/ SCL leveraged Facebook private data on millions of people, obtained from most without their specific permission, to create a "psyops" political disinformation campaign featuring emotional appeals to voters' internal psychology, coupled with a variety of other tactics.  The campaign used foreign workers within the US, and apparently coordinated with political action committees, possibly violating US law.  The appropriation of private Facebook data possibly violated UK law.  The Cambridge Analytica/ SCL CEO also boasted that the organization was capable of various dirty tricks, including several species of extortion.

It is unclear to what extent, if any, this disinformation campaign helped Mr Trump to win the presidency.  But clearly we now have a president whose campaign was apparently happy to employ disinformation on a grand scale, likely violating US and UK laws in the process, to win election.

We have long advocated better awareness of insidious disinformation campaigns in health care, which we previously separated into stealth systematic marketing, lobbying, and policy advocacy campaigns.  Furthermore, we have long advocated more vigorous regulatory and law-enforcement action against them.  Remember that many of the stealth marketing campaigns we discussed came to light through regulatory and law enforcement action.

Yet what sense does that make when the federal regulators and law enforcers operate under a regime that was perfectly happy to use disinformation to secure its election?

It apparently makes no more sense than advocating for better federal law enforcement measures to reduce conflicts of interest and corruption in health care under an extraordinarily conflicted and corrupt regime (look here.)

The fish is rotting from the head. 

So in parallel with what we said then, the only way we can now address health care deception, crime, and corruption is to excise the deception, crime and corruption at the heart of our government.

Thursday, August 24, 2017

A Stealth Marketer Goes Through the Revolving Door to ... the President's Council of Economic Advisors?!

Stealthy, deceptive systematic marketing, lobbying, and policy advocacy campaigns on behalf of big health care organizations, often pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device companies, have long been a subject of Health Care Renewal.  A relatively recently revealed example was the stealth marketing campaign used by GlaxoSmithKline to sell its antidepressant Paxil.  This campaign included manipulating and suppressing clinical research, bribing physicians to prescribe the drug, use of key opinion leaders as disguised marketers, and manipulation of continuing medical education.  Other notable examples included Johnson and Johnson's campaign to sell Respirdal (look here),  and the infamous Pfizer campaign to sell Neurontin (look here and here).   Notably, stealth marketing seemed to be one reason for the growing popularity of narcotics (opioids) starting in the 1990s (look here). 

Such campaigns have gotten more exposure in the media and the scholarly literature, so we have not written as much about them in the last few years as previously.  So I confess we did not directly discuss a February, 2017,  investigative report by ProPublica about Precision Health Economics, a company that has orchestrated several such campaigns (although we did allude to it here).

Prof Tomas Philipson Named to President's Council of Economic Advisors

This week this report suddnely appears very salient, since Yahoo News just revealed that a top leader of Precision Health Economics, Prof Tomas Philipson, has been nominated to the President's Council of Economic Advisors by Donald Trump.

Donald Trump’s new senior economic adviser has helped pharmaceutical companies lobby to charge astronomical prices for crucial drugs.

Last Monday, the White House confirmed that Tomas J. Philipson, a health care economist, was joining the President’s Council of Economic Advisors.

That announcement was made just hours after Trump publicly accused Merck CEO Kenneth Frazier of charging patients 'ripoff prices' for drugs after he resigned from the President’s Manufacturing Council in protest at the president’s response to the violence at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia last weekend.

Now that Ken Frazier of Merck Pharma has resigned from President's Manufacturing Council,he will have more time to LOWER RIPOFF DRUG PRICES!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 14, 2017


.@Merck Pharma is a leader in higher & higher drug prices while at the same time taking jobs out of the U.S. Bring jobs back & LOWER PRICES!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 14, 2017

Precision Health Economics

Given the potential influence of Prof Philipson on the Council of Economic Advisors, it is worth summarizing what ProPublic said about his career at Precision Health Economics.

PHE as Orchestrator of Stealth Marketing and Policy Advocacy

First, the business of PHE is to help pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies market their products and influence public policy in their favor.

While collaboration between higher education and industry is hardly unusual, the professors at Precision Health Economics have taken it to the next level, sharpening the conflicts between their scholarly and commercial roles, which they don’t always disclose. Their activities illustrate the growing influence of academics-for-hire in shaping the national debate on issues from climate change to antitrust policy, which ultimately affect the quality of life and the household budgets of ordinary Americans — including what they pay for critical medications.

Furthermore,

'This is just an extension of the way that the drug industry has been involved in every phase of medical education and medical research,' said Harvard Medical School professor Eric G. Campbell, who studies medical conflicts of interest. 'They are using this group of economists it appears to provide data in high-profile journals to have a positive impact on policy.'

The firm participates in many aspects of a drug’s launch, both advising on 'pricing strategies' and then demonstrating the value of a drug once it comes on the market, according to its brochure. 'Led by professors at elite research universities,' the group boasts of a range of valuable services it has delivered to clients, including generating 'academic publications in the world’s leading research journals' and helping to lead 'formal public debates in prestigious, closely watched forums.'
Again, some people may naively imagine that academic publications are written by unbiased academics, not hired guns for industry, and that formal debates on major issues ought to again by led by people who are disintered and authoritative, not hired guns.  That would be very naive.

So PHE has set itself up as a vehicle to market and advocate on behalf of big corporations while making that work appear to be unbaised academic discourse.  In particular,

Precision Health Economics has counted at least 25 pharmaceutical and biotech companies and trade groups as clients. The roster includes Abbott Nutrition, AbbVie, Amgen, Biogen, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Celgene, Gilead, Intuitive Surgical, Janssen [a subsidiary of Johnson and Johnson], Merck, the National Pharmaceutical Council, Novartis, Otsuka, Pfizer, PhRMA, rEVO Biologics, Shire and Takeda.
Note that many of these companies are known for perpetrating the kinds of marketing shenanigans that we discuss on this blog.  See the links above.

 PHE Has Been Accused of Biased Work for Pharma Prettied by Its Principals' Academic Credentials

To justify the value of expensive drugs, the professors affiliated with Precision Health Economics rely on complicated economic models that purport to quantify the net social benefits that the drugs will create.

However,

Critics have at times questioned the assumptions underlying the consultants’ economic models, such as the choice of patient populations, and suggested that some of their findings tilt toward their industry clients. For example, some have tried and failed to reproduce their results justifying the value of cancer treatments.

Precision Health Economics allows drugmakers to review articles by its academics prior to publication in academic journals, said a former business development manager of the consulting group. Such prior review is controversial in higher education because it can be seen as impinging on academic freedom.

In addition,

About 75 percent of publications by the firm’s employees in the past three years have either been funded by the pharmaceutical industry or have been done in collaboration with drug companies, a ProPublica review found.

Some academics worry that a tight relationship with industry might suggest bias. 'I personally find, when your enterprise relies so substantially on a particular source of funds, you will tend to favor that source,' said Princeton economist Uwe Reinhardt.

Thus several of the firm's campaigns have produced considerable controversy.  For example,

Advocating Increased Pricing for Oncology Drugs

Precision Health Economics raised its profile in 2013 when the president’s annual economic report cited a cancer study by several of the firm’s principals and consultants. To some critics, though, the study showed how industry funding can taint academic research.

Originally published in Health Affairs, where [PHE founder Dana] Goldman also serves on the editorial board, the study found that Americans paid more for cancer care than Europeans but had better survival gains.

As the study acknowledged, it was funded by Bristol-Myers Squibb, a company that at the time was developing a much-anticipated cancer treatment. It was priced at more than $150,000 per year when it eventually came on the market. All three founders of Precision Health Economics were listed as authors of the Health Affairs article, alongside one of their employees, yet none of the founders disclosed their ties to their consulting firm in the published study. In an interview, Goldman said this might have been an 'oversight.'

In addition,

As the cancer study gained national recognition, its methodology and findings came under fire. Researchers from Dartmouth College tried and failed to reproduce the results. Cancer care in the U.S., their research found, may actually provide less value than cancer care in Europe, considering cost.

'We know that [the U.S. health care system] is more disorganized and disorganization is more expensive, so it’s surprising to believe that the U.S. would perform better in a cost-effectiveness sense,' said Samir Soneji, one of the authors of the counter-study and an assistant professor of health policy at Dartmouth. The science in the original study, Soneji says, was 'questionable.'

Soneji was not alone in his criticism. Aaron Carroll, a pediatrics professor at the Indiana University School of Medicine, reviewed the methodology and concluded that the Precision Health Economics researchers had used a measure that can frequently be misinterpreted. Instead of relying on mortality rates, which factor in a patient’s age of death, the study employed survival rates, looking at how long people live after diagnosis. Cancer screening, which can increase survival rates, is more frequent for some cancers in the U.S. than in other countries, Carroll says.

'When they wrote that paper using survival rates, they were clearly cherry picking,' Carroll told ProPublica. 'If the arguments are flawed and people keep using them, I would be concerned that they have some other motive.'

PHE Work on Behalf of PCSK9 Inhibitors

Not long after the controversy over its cancer research, Precision Health Economics became embroiled in another academic spat related to a client’s product. This time, it was over a breakthrough treatment that, injected one to two times per month, could help millions of Americans with high cholesterol. At the $14,000-per-year price set by one of its makers, Amgen, the PCSK9 inhibitor could also hike the nation’s annual prescription drug costs by an unprecedented $125 billion, or 38 percent. Its price in the U.S. is twice as much as in the U.K.

The U.S. price of the drug has come under vigorous attack from the nonprofit Institute for Clinical and Economic Review. ICER, which began as a small research project at Harvard Medical School, studies the cost-effectiveness of drugs, balancing their value to patients against the impact of their cost on society. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services proposed a new rule in March 2016 that includes the use of value-based pricing studies, specifically citing the work of ICER.

The industry has attacked many of the institute’s studies, particularly those that find a treatment is overpriced. 

PHE orchesterated an attack on the ICER conclusions.

ICER concluded in 2015 that the new cholesterol treatment, the PCSK9 inhibitor, should cost about one-fifth what Amgen is charging. A few months later, Philipson, the Precision Health Economics co-founder, and Jena wrote an op-ed in Forbes, citing the institute’s research and deriding its approach to value pricing as 'pseudo-science and voodoo economics.' Only Philipson disclosed his ties to Precision Health Economics, and neither academic disclosed that Amgen was a client of the firm.

PHE Principals Have Failed to Disclose Their Conflicts of Interest

The professors’ disclosure of their ties to the firm and to the pharmaceutical industry in scholarly articles is inconsistent: sometimes extensive, sometimes scanty. Members of Precision Health tend to reveal less about their paid work in blogs, public forums like conferences, and legislative testimony. At the Capitol Hill briefing last May on hepatitis C drugs, Lakdawalla didn’t mention his affiliation with Precision Health Economics, though it was listed in the journal issue, which was provided to attendees.
One can argue that failing to disclose relevant conflicts of interest is deceptive.

Prof Philipson's Role in PHE has Increased in Scope

PHE was sold in 2015 to a "privately held biotech company, Precision for Value."  Since the sale, "Philipson is listed as chief economist and the chair of the strategy and innovation board."

A Problem Beyond the Revolving Door



We have frequently railed about the revolving door affecting health care.  Prof Philipson clearly will be transiting the revolving door, in that he will be going directly from a responsible corporate position into a government role in which we will be able to influence policy that affects the corporation in question (as well as other corporate interests, of course).  Nowadays, people frequently transit the revolving door from or to US government positions.  We most recently posted about the revolving door affecting health care in the current US administration here.

We previously opined about the revolving door....

The revolving door is a species of conflict of interest. Worse, some experts have suggested that the revolving door is in fact corruption.  As we noted here, the experts from the distinguished European anti-corruption group U4 wrote,


The literature makes clear that the revolving door process is a source of valuable political connections for private firms. But it generates corruption risks and has strong distortionary effects on the economy, especially when this power is concentrated within a few firms.
The ongoing parade of people transiting the revolving door from industry to the Trump administration once again suggests how the revolving door may enable certain of those with private vested interests to have excess influence, way beyond that of ordinary citizens, on how the government works, and that the country is still increasingly being run by a cozy group of insiders with ties to both government and industry. The latest cohort of revolving door transits suggests that regulatory capture is likely to become much worse in the near future.

So, as we have said before.... The continuing egregiousness of the revolving door in health care shows how health care leadership can play mutually beneficial games, regardless of the their effects on patients' and the public's health.  Once again, true health care reform would cut the ties between government and corporate leaders and their cronies that have lead to government of, for and by corporate executives rather than the people at large.


However, the case of Prof Philipson raises issues beyond the revolving door.  Prof Philipson is not a mere corporate executive.  He is a master of stealth marketing/ lobbying advocacy.  Stealth marketing, in particular, has been one of the scourges of US health care.

Back in a 2006 blog post about the stealth marketing of Neurontin, I wrote:

Physicians must be increasingly skeptical about educational and scholarly activities that may be disguised efforts at drug marketing.

Shame on the companies that have implemented such stealth marketing programs. Shame on the academic physicians who have taken money to help them out without revealing their financial interests to their physicians colleagues.

In a 2008 blog post about the same case, I wrote:

 This unfortunately is another blow to the current paradigm of evidence-based medicine. The EBM paradigm calls for physicians to make optimal decisions for individual patients based on their knowledge of the clinical context, the patients' values and wishes, and a critical review of the best relevant evidence from clinical research. For the paradigm to work, the assumptions are that all relevant research can be found, and that the research studies, while imperfect, were not intentionally designed or reported to deceive the reader. Yet the case of gabapentin adds to fears that relevant evidence that is unfavorable to the interests of the drug, device, or biotechnology company which sponsored the work is likely to be suppressed by that sponsor, and that commercially sponsored research is often deliberately manipulated to make its results appear more favorable.

Also, as Professor Dickersin noted (reported by the WSJ), "in exchange for being experimented upon in trials, patients are told they are contributing to human knowledge. To withhold negative results from the public breaks that ethical obligation to such patients...."

I began to think in the years after 2008 that the increasing exposure of stealth marketing (and related stealth lobbying and policy advocacy) campaigns would lead to their eventual decrease.  Never in my wildest dreams in 2008 did I foresee a stealth marketing master transiting the revolving door to be appointed to the President's Council of Economic Advisors.  (But then again, back then I would have laughed out loud at the notion of Donald Trump as President).  I seem to be really bad at prophecy.

We are slipping farther and farther from my ideal of true health care reform.