Prescription drug prices are too high — there is a bipartisan consensus on that much in Washington, as recent estimates suggest that the average American spends about $1,200 on prescription drugs each year.
But ambitious legislation designed to curtail these rising costs is stalled as pharmaceutical companies spend tens of millions of dollars lobbying against the measures.
Drug manufacturers spent $52 million on lobbying in the first quarter of 2019 after spending $169 million on lobbying the previous year. A total of 116 companies and associations have lobbied on behalf of the industry so far in 2019, with 692 individual lobbyists.
