At least six organizations that claim to champion patient rights have deep financial and operational ties to Big Pharma and work to advance corporate profits. These industry front groups routinely lobby in line with the pharmaceutical industry’s priorities, challenge drug price negotiations in court briefings, and promote the industry’s interests in public statements, according to new research.

The findings are the latest example of how pharmaceutical companies are leveraging the legitimacy of patient advocacy groups to further their corporate aims, which are often in direct conflict with the patient rights such groups claim to support.

A report published this Monday by Patients for Affordable Drugs, a national patient advocacy nonprofit, reveals that six organizations ostensibly dedicated to expanding health research and health care access in fact receive significant funding from the pharmaceutical industry, have leadership with ongoing pharmaceutical industry connections, or both.

“There’s clearly a revolving door between many of these groups and between pharma,” said Merith Basey, executive director of Patients for Affordable Drugs, which does not receive funding from pharmaceutical groups. The groups “tend to then represent the interests of pharma and their shareholders and not of patients,” more than half of whom are struggling to afford their prescription medications.

In effect, these organizations function as industry front groups, echoing the positions of their funders while posing as credible advocacy groups. This includes attacking the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act through public comments, court filings, and lobbying. The law, which was strongly opposed by the pharmaceutical industry, granted Medicare the authority to negotiate lower prices for a list of expensive drugs.

So far this year, the drug industry’s trade association, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), has spent nearly $13 million lobbying on issues including drug pricing reform. Drugmakers have also filed several lawsuits challenging Medicare price negotiations.

The six patient advocacy groups highlighted in the recent report “are posing as independent patient or policy groups while acting as mouthpieces for the drug industry’s agenda,” including undermining the reforms to lower drug prices, according to a press release by Patients For Affordable Drugs. They all have close ties to the pharmaceutical industry, including:

• Fifteen of the Alliance for Aging Research’s twenty-person leadership board come from the pharmaceutical industry, including Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson.
• The American Action Forum is a conservative think tank and sister organization to the American Action Network, a group that opposes drug pricing reform and has received tens of millions of dollars from PhRMA.
• The Center for Medicine in the Public Interest has long-standing financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry, repeatedly receives money from PhRMA, and opposes Medicare drug pricing negotiations.
• The Council for Affordable Health Coverage is managed and operated by the pharmaceutical lobbying firm Horizon Government Affairs.
• The Pacific Research Institute, a think tank for “free market” policy solutions funded in part by petrochemical tycoon Charles Koch’s right-wing political network, has received money from the PhRMA and drug companies including Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and GlaxoSmithKline.
• Seniors 4 Better Care is a front for American Prosperity Alliance, a dark money group that donates millions of dollars to conservative political action committees and attacks drug pricing reforms.

These organizations promote industry interests in a variety of ways. The Alliance for Aging Research, for example, filed an amicus brief in a district court “concerning the legality of certain provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act” while the court was deliberating on four separate cases.

The new report also notes that staff members at the Council for Affordable Health Coverage hold positions at their parent lobbying company, Horizon Government Affairs, which actively engages with lawmakers on behalf of PhRMA. Additionally, the American Action Forum has a group of experts that helps Big Pharma churn out industry talking points.

The Council for Affordable Health Coverage “promotes market-based health care, with a long track record of opposing other government-first health care policies consistently rejected by patients and voters, such as Medicare for All, single payer, ‘public option,’ and the so-called ‘Inflation Reduction Act,’” spokesperson Kelly Broadway wrote in an email to the Lever.

“Rather than engage with the substance of [the Pacific Research Institute’s] arguments in favor of market-oriented policies that support pharmaceutical innovation — and thus save and improve lives across the world — Patients for Affordable Drugs has chosen to engage in ad hominem attacks,” Sally Pipes, CEO of the Pacific Research Institute wrote in an email to the Lever. “Policymakers and the public deserve an honest and open discussion — not smear campaigns that obscure the real consequences of government price controls and other anti-innovation policies.”

The American Action Forum “is focused on educating the public about complex federal domestic policy issues, including those related to health care,” Angela Kuck, vice president of communications, wrote in an email to the Lever. “Our organization receives contributions from a variety of individuals, businesses, trade associations, and foundations. . . . Our website clearly states that the American Action Network is a sister organization, but it is a completely separate organization from the American Action Forum.”

The Alliance for Aging Research, Center for Medicine in the Public Interest, and Seniors 4 Better Care did not respond to requests for comment.

Big Pharma has a long history of funding shadowy front groups that claim to advocate for patients but actually serve industry interests. In the women’s health movement, for instance, certain advocacy groups began relying heavily on pharmaceutical sponsorship in the late 1980s. Such partnerships between advocacy groups and industry became increasingly normalized throughout the 1990s, with “codes of ethics governing the relationships set out by organizations and industry groups,” according to a 2019 journal article.

A 2017 report found that more than 80 percent of the top 104 patient advocacy organizations with revenues of at least $7.5 million accept funding from drug and medical device companies — and experts say such largesse likely shapes their stances on pharmaceutical-related policies. Meanwhile, prices for generic and brand-name drugs are almost three times higher in the United States than in other countries.

The names of the identified front groups are “very intentionally misleading,” said Basey. “That’s what they do best, it’s sort of smoke and mirrors. But actually, you scratch the surface and see, well, who are they actually representing?”