From today's New York Times, "Industry Fights to Put Imprint on Drug Bill":

In the thick of the 2000 presidential campaign, executives at Bristol-Myers Squibb, one of the nation's largest drug companies, received an urgent message: donate money to George W. Bush.

The message did not come from Republican campaign officials. It came from top Bristol-Myers executives, according to four executives who say they donated to Mr. Bush under pressure from their bosses. They said that they were urged to donate the maximum — $1,000 in their own name and $1,000 in their spouse's — and were warned that the company's chief executive would be notified if they failed to give.

Bristol-Myers said no one was forced to donate. But elsewhere in the drug industry, the message about the election was much the same. At some companies, officials circulated a videotape of Vice President Al Gore railing against the high price of prescription drugs. A torrent of contributions for Mr. Bush and other Republicans resulted. And the money kept flowing, right through the elections of 2002.

Those donations may soon pay off handsomely for the pharmaceutical business. Four years ago, a Democrat was in the White House and the industry was bitterly fighting a prescription drug proposal that it said would have led to price controls. Today, a Republican-controlled Congress is preparing to send a Republican president a measure with a central provision — the use of private health plans to deliver Medicare prescription drug benefits — that is tailor-made to the industry's specifications.

The story of how pharmaceutical manufacturers helped shape the Medicare drug benefit is, in part, that of a calculated decision by a lucrative industry to throw its financial weight behind one political party — with $50 million in campaign contributions over the last four years, the vast majority to Republicans. It is also the story of a dogged, mostly unseen campaign that included a small army of lobbyists in Washington and a network of industry-financed groups, which carried the drug makers' message to the public.

Throughout, the industry had a single goal: to defeat any legislation that would let Medicare negotiate steep discounts on the prices of medicines for its 40 million beneficiaries.

Instead, if there had to be a prescription drug benefit, industry executives agreed that it should be administered by the private sector, where insurance companies would negotiate on their own, without Medicare's influence. That is precisely what will occur if bills passed by the House and Senate are reconciled and a law is signed by President Bush. Both measures envision taxpayers spending $400 billion over the next 10 years on the drug makers' products, while banning government officials from even seeking volume discounts.

"The drug lobby has just emasculated Congress with tons of money," said Representative Pete Stark of California, the senior Democrat on the health subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee, whose Republican leaders wrote the House Medicare bill. "They bought themselves a deal."

This is only a portion of the article. You really should go read the whole thing, but you may want to make sure you have medication for high blood pressure - and the insurance or cash to pay for it - on hand when you do.