Inside STAT: The story behind PhRMA's biggest lobbying failure in years

(MIKE REDDY FOR STAT)

This week, a new policy that forces drug makers to pay far more into Medicare — and will cost the industry nearly $12 billion over the next decade — goes into effect. When lawmakers laid out the plan last February, PhRMA, the drug industry's storied lobbying group, sprung into action in a bid to reverse its loss. But that effort wasn't successful. “This might well be the biggest political loss that PhRMA has suffered in a decade,” said Daniel Carpenter, a professor of government at Harvard. STAT spoke with key members of Congress, congressional staffers, experts, and lobbyists both within the drug industry and outside it to piece together the inside story of how the drug industry finally lost — big — in Washington. STAT’s Nicholas Florko has the story here.