[Pharm-policy] Hatch Admits He's 'Senator Anonymous'

[James Love]

http://www.rollcall.com/pages/news/00/06/news0626d.html

Hatch Admits He's 'Senator Anonymous'

By Paul Kane

The mystery is over: Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) revealed to Roll Call
late Friday that he's "Senator Anonymous."

Trying to figure out the identity of "Senator Anonymous" has become a
major parlor game on the Hill in recent weeks, with an outside group
offering a $1,000 reward to anyone who could identify the author of a
provision that would help Schering-Plough Corp. with its attempts to
extend its patent for the allergy drug Claritin.

"I'm 'Mr. Anonymous,'" Hatch declared in a telephone interview, quickly
adding that it's all a big mix-up and he never intended to conceal his
authorship of the provision. 

Hatch, who has been showered with campaign contributions and other
favors by Schering-Plough, explained that his aides asked the Senator's
official legislative counsel staff to draft an amendment and that his
name was on the bill all along. 

The Judiciary chairman said that somehow an anonymous copy of the
provision accidentally circulated around the Hill, giving the appearance
that somebody was trying to secretly do a favor for Schering-Plough.

Hatch claims that the confusion escalated because his staff actually
drafted the provision, so he did not initially realize that this was
being done on his behalf.

He said it was only after Roll Call pressed him on the issue Thursday
night that he decided to get to the bottom of the matter.

"If I've done something wrong, fine, "he said in a telephone interview
Friday. "If they want to rough me up, fine. The truth is this is not
out-of-the-ordinary legislative work."

The Seniors Coalition, which opposes the patent extension in an effort
to open up the allergy medicine to lower-priced generic drug companies,
ran an advertisement in several publications last week about the
mysterious issue.

The ad, which ran in Roll Call, offered a $1,000 reward to anyone who
could identify "the Senator who secretly placed a multi-million dollar
patent extension provision for Schering-Plough in the Military
Construction Appropriations bill."

When asked Friday whether he would split the $1,000 reward with Roll
Call, Hatch responded with a laugh that he's had enough battles with
generic drug companies. 

"They've given me enough grief,"he said. "They owe [the $1,000] to me."


   [snip]


In the process, the company [Schering} has become one of the biggest
individual lobbying forces in Washington, with $8.5 million in
expenditures last year, up 127 percent from 1998, according to lobbying
disclosure reports filed with the House and the Senate. 

That money helps Schering-Plough maintain a stable of prominent outside
lobbyists as well, including former Rep. Vin Weber (R-Minn.) and former
Sen. Dennis DeConcini (D-Ariz.).

In addition to its lobbying battleship, Schering-Plough has been a
generous campaign contributor, with more than $390,000 in soft-money
donations to the party campaign committees in 1999, two-thirds of which
went to Republicans, according to an FECInfo analysis.

The drug company's political action committee, the Better Government
Fund, has doled out $200,000 in contributions this election cycle to
individual candidates, according to Federal Election Commission reports.

Hatch, in particular, has been a large recipient of campaign
contributions from Schering-Plough.

Last year, the company gave $5,000 to both Hatch's presidential campaign
and his Senate re-election effort, and then allowed him to use a
corporate jet for his campaign travels at a cut-rate cost. And Hatch has
spoken out in favor of past efforts to give Schering-Plough an avenue to
get its patent extended.

Before the telephone interview on Friday, Hatch admitted that some
people - he wouldn't say specifically who - had asked him to get the
provision into an appropriations bill. But he repeatedly denied that he
himself asked legislative counsel to draft the prospective amendment and
that he was shopping it to appropriators. 

"It's no secret some would have liked me to put Schering-Plough on
there," he said on Thursday. "I've been asked to do it."

Hatch, however, was coy about the possibility that his staff had crafted
the provision. "It could have been anybody," he said, adding, "Nobody's
run that by me."

Then in the Friday interview, Hatch said that after further checking
into the matter he determined that his staff had indeed crafted the
provision in the hope of reaching a compromise with Claritin opponents.

"To make a long story short, the purpose of the draft was to start
discussions to bring people together,"he said.

Manus Cooney, Hatch's staff director on the Judiciary panel, said the
provision was drafted several months ago and given to Democrats as part
of an effort to deal with the matter through regular legislation -
rather than on an appropriations measure.

If it became law, the Hatch provision would allow Congress to forward a
patent complaint to the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, which would then
make a recommendation to Congress as to whether the Food and Drug
Administration took an unnecessarily long time in approving the patent.
Hatch says it would take politics out of the process.

Opponents, however, note that a drug company would get an automatic
patent extension while the courts and Congress were considering the
issue, costing consumers who want cheaper drugs. Claritin's sales hit
$2.7 billion in 1999, and generic drug companies - which have been
waging their own guerilla warfare lobbying campaign against Claritin -
expect to be able to sell the drug at 80 percent less than
Schering-Plough does.

Hatch noted that the speculation over Claritin began after Sen. Judd
Gregg (R-N.H.) got a patent extension for a discovery by Columbia
University researchers that helps ease the drug manufacturing process.
Drug companies have to pay a 1 percent royalty to the university,
Gregg's alma mater, and it has netted Columbia close to $300 million
over the years.

Unlike the Columbia provision, Hatch said there have been hearings on
Schering-Plough's beef with the Food and Drug Administration's handling
of its Claritin patent. And that's why Hatch supports some sort of
relief for Schering-Plough.

Hatch said he doesn't care if the relief comes on an appropriations
bill, as opposed to the usual route, which would be his Judiciary panel.
"There has been a legitimate case made," he said.

And Hatch did nothing to quell speculation that lobbyists for
Schering-Plough and Columbia are working on a deal that would somehow
package the two provisions together, with Claritin supporters Hatch and
Sen. Robert Torricelli (D-N.J.) backing the Columbia deal if Columbia's
backers, Gregg and Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.), support
Claritin.

"There are some people who would like to wed those two issues together,"
he said.

Hatch had previously been opposed to the Columbia provision, but now
says he might be swayed to the university's side if there were a hearing
before his committee. "It could happen," he said.

Hatch's staff did engage in discussions with Columbia about one large
patent bill, but that focused on bringing the bill through Judiciary,
sources close to Hatch said. And Cooney adamantly denied that any of
Hatch's staff had ever pushed the Claritin provision as an amendment to
the military construction spending bill or the supplemental package,
which is going to be wrapped into milcon and which currently contains
the Columbia provision.

But Hatch said it was possible that someone on his staff may have talked
to Stevens about the possibility of getting it on an appropriations
bill. "Staff could have very easily explored it, [suggesting,] 'Could we
put something together?'" he said.

"This is just part of the process," he said, discounting the objections
of the seniors groups and generic drug makers. "This is just somebody
trying to raise a stink. This is just a tempest in a teapot."

Before Hatch made his revelation, Schering-Plough officials tried to
distance the company from the anonymous provision. "It's not our bill,"
said Bill O'Donnell, the company's spokesman. 

O'Donnell said Schering-Plough wants the House and Senate Judiciary
committees to mark up a bill offered by Torricelli that would allow
Schering-Plough and several other drug makers that were in the FDA
pipeline as Congress passed the 1984 Hatch-Waxman bill to appeal for
patent extensions to a review board.

Torricelli, a one-time "Anonymous" suspect, received some negative
publicity in May 1999 when the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee,
which he chairs, took in a $50,000 check from Schering-Plough just days
after he introduced the legislation. In addition, the company's PAC
contributed $10,000 in February 1999 to Torricelli's 2002 re-election
campaign.

For his part, Torricelli criticized the back-door maneuvering.
"Schering-Plough has a legitimate problem," he said. "[But] this should
be done openly. ... I would prefer the route I offered."

But Hatch said getting the patent provision on an appropriations measure
may be the only avenue - although he says he won't be the one pushing
the provision.

"I'm going to keep my credibility on these matters," he said.



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James Love, Director           | http://www.cptech.org
Consumer Project on Technology | mailto:love@cptech.org 
P.O. Box 19367                 | voice: 1.202.387.8030
Washington, DC 20036           | fax:   1.202.234.5176
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