Hugo Berlanga Legislated for Drug Maker Before Becoming
its Hired Gun
Bush said Berlanga, who was the Democratic chair of the Texas House Public Health Committee until 1998, accompanied him to St. Louis “to tout our record on health in Texas.” Using Berlanga as a poster boy for his own bipartisan pragmatism, Bush said, “I didn’t care whether he was a Republican or a Democrat. What I cared about is could we work together. That’s what Washington, D.C. needs.”
Berlanga exemplifies how government works in Austin—as in Washington. He resigned as a powerful committee chair in March 1998 to become a revolving-door hired gun. By 1999, Berlanga billed 22 lobby clients between $635,000 and $1.3 million. One-third of these clients were health interests affected by his old committee.
As House Public Health Committee chair, Berlanga authored a sweetheart 1997 bill for future lobby client DuPont Pharmaceuticals; Texas’ pragmatic governor signed it into law. The next year, DuPont Pharmaceuticals pragmatically put Berlanga on a lobby retainer of between $50,000 and $100,000 a year.
Some 2 million people, most of whom are elderly people with heart disease, take DuPont’s Coumadin to thin their blood. In 1996 the FDA approved a generic substitute called “warfarin.” DuPont then lobbied state governments to restrict sales of this generic, which sells for about half the price of Coumadin. Just three states passed these sweetheart bills.
Berlanga’s bill (HB 2571) barred pharmacists from selling warfarin and seven other generic “narrow therapeutic index drugs” unless a doctor explicitly authorizes a generic substitution (this class of therapeutic drugs only works properly when dosages are precisely controlled). Estimates predicted that the Texas law would protect $20 million in annual name-brand drug sales—led by DuPont’s Coumadin.
To counter this rip-off, the FDA wrote physicians and state regulators in 1998, restating its finding that the generic product was as effective as Coumadin.
A state judge barred the Texas Pharmacy Board’s gubernatorial appointees
from implementing Berlanga’s law in December 1998, ruling that they failed
to justify a policy that would cost Texans millions of dollars. The Board
completely abandoned this anti-competitive policy in February 2000. •
|
|
||
|
|
|
|
| Coalition For Nurses In Advanced Practice |
$150,000
|
$100,000
|
| AT&T |
$100,000
|
$50,000
|
| City Of Austin |
$100,000
|
$50,000
|
| City of Corpus Christi |
$100,000
|
$50,000
|
| Driscoll Children's Hospital |
$100,000
|
$50,000
|
| DuPont Pharmaceuticals Co. |
$100,000
|
$50,000
|
| Patton Boggs, LLP |
$100,000
|
$50,000
|
| Port of Corpus Christi |
$100,000
|
$50,000
|
| Webb County |
$100,000
|
$50,000
|
| Accident & Injury Pain Centers, Inc. |
$50,000
|
$25,000
|
| Incarnate Word Health Systems |
$50,000
|
$25,000
|
| Martex Energy |
$50,000
|
$25,000
|
| Sagem Morpho |
$50,000
|
$25,000
|
| Waste Control Specialists |
$50,000
|
$25,000
|
| Workers Compensation Health Clinic, Inc. |
$25,000
|
$10,000
|
| Chicago Title Insurance Co. |
$10,000
|
$0
|
| Commonwealth Land Title Insurance Co. |
$10,000
|
$0
|
| Lawyers Title Insurance Corporation |
$10,000
|
$0
|
| Partners Title Co. |
$10,000
|
$0
|
| Security Union Title Insurance Co. |
$10,000
|
$0
|
| Ticor Title Insurance Company |
$10,000
|
$0
|
| Transnation Title Insurance Co. |
$10,000
|
$0
|
|
Totals
|
$1,295,000
|
$635,000
|
For more on this issue, see:
“Bush’s Pal, the Drug Lobbyist,” Newsweek, October 30 [www.msnbc.com/news/479674.asp];
and
“Bush Signed Texas Drug Law,” Associated Press October 17, 2000 [www.latimes.com/news/politics/elect2000/pres/wire2/20001017/tCB00V0944.html]
# # #
Texans for Public Justice is a non-partisan, non-profit policy &
research organization
which tracks the influence of money in politics.