Pharma Deal With White House on Course to Net Industry Billions

Sam Stein
HuffPost

The deal struck between the pharmaceutical lobby, the White House and Senate Democrats has drastically improved Big Pharma's expected profits, a private industry report finds.

IMS Health, a company that supplies the pharmaceutical companies with sales data, predicts that new health reform legislation -- combined with a projected upswing in the economy -- will result in a net gain of more than $137 billion in total market sales over the next four years. The new assessment was contained in document obtained by the Huffington Post.

Back in March, that same firm projected a compound annual growth rate of -0.1 percent in the period of 2008 through 2013. In October, with the general outlines of health care reform clearly in place, it revised that number to a positive 3.5 percent for over the same period.

What happened in those seven months? The economy started looking up, for one, as did the overall prospects of health care reform. But the industry also won a major lobbying victory.

(More here.)