Wednesday, September 19, 2007

National Survey Results Released Tomorrow

American University will announce the results of a national survey assessing the public's perception of the FDA and of prescription drug safety.

The event will be held at the National Press Club on Thursday, September 20, from 9:30-10:30AM. American University, in partnership with The Mellman Group and Public Opinion Strategies, will announce national survey results on the public's perception of the FDA and prescription drug safety. The forum is the second event in a series of four.

http://www.dialogueondrugsafety.org/

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Partisanship and Health Care Concerns

Hillary Clinton's health care plan announcement was big news this week and based on the recent national survey sponsored by CCPS, it should be. We asked respondents how important health care issues would be when considering who to support in the 2008 Presidential election. 19% of our sample said that it would be one of the two most important issues and an additional 45% said it would be very important. But what is even more important for Clinton is that Democrats, whose votes she needs to win to get the nomination, are much more concerned about the issue than Republicans. The question about the importance of this issue breaks down as follows:
While only one in ten Republicans said that the issue would be one of the two most important to their 2008 vote, about one in four Democrats said the same. In fact, combining the two categories, fewer than half of Republican respondents even listed the issue as at least very important, while nearly 85% of Democrats said the issue was at least very important to them.

The bottom line? You may not need a health care plan to win the Republican nomination, but it certainly seems important to Democratic voters.

Sunday, September 16, 2007

Americans Strongly Dissatisfied With Health Care System

As part of the Dialogue on Prescription Drug Safety that CCPS is conducting this Fall, we commissioned a telephone survey of 800 American adults on health care and drug safety issues. We will release more on this survey later this week, but I thought I'd go ahead and post about one of our findings--the American public's widespread dissatisfaction with the health care system. We asked respondents the following question:

Generally speaking, is the current health care system meeting the needs of most Americans?

With the follow up:

(IF YES/NO, ASK:) And do you believe STRONGLY or NOT SO STRONGLY that the current
health care system (IS/IS NOT) meeting the needs of most Americans?

And received the following responses:

16% STRONGLY YES IS
14% NOT-SO-STRONGLY YES IS
11% NOT-SO-STRONGLY NO IS NOT
54% STRONGLY NO IS NOT
6% DON'T KNOW

So, over half of Americans feel STRONGLY that the health care system is not meeting the needs of most Americans, indicating that not only are citizens dissatisfied, but they have definite feelings in that direction. By contrast, only 16% feel strongly that the system is meeting the needs of most Americans.

We also asked respondents how important healh care issues would be in deciding who to support in the 2008 presidential race. 19% said that it would be one of the two most important issues, and another 45% said it would be very important. Among this 64% of respondents, displeasure with the health care system is especially high, with nearly 72% of this group feeling strongly that the health care system is not meeting the needs of most Americans.

Which citizens are most likely to feel strongly that the health care system is not meeting the needs of most Americans. Perhaps unsurprisingly, those most dissatisfied with the health care system tend to be women and Democrats. However, what may be telling is that those Americans who have had more experience with the health care system recently are also more likely to feel strongly that it is not meeting the needs of most Americans. Respondents who had taken a prescription drug during the previous year were 10% more likely to feel strongly dissatisfied with the health care system than those who had not (60.5% to 50.3%). The same pattern holds for the 40% of Americans who reported that they or an immediate family member suffers from a life threatening illness. This group was 63.7% likely to feel strongly that the health care system was not meeting Americans' needs while only 54.2% of those who did not report a life threatening illness in their family felt the same. At least in our survey, familiarity with the health care system does appear to lead to lower ratings of how that system is working.

Tuesday, September 4, 2007

New Lobbying Data

August 14th was the filing deadline for lobbying disclosures for the first six months of 2007. Our good friends at Open Secrets now have updated lists for the top lobbying firms, organizations, and contracts. And by "top" I mean in terms of money - there are many ways to define the "top" firms, etc. Using dollar amounts is simply the easiest, but not necessarily the best. Perhaps that is a post for another day.

The top spender so far in 2007 is, surprise surprise, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. This massive group has been number one on the list of top spenders 8 out of the 10 years that this data has been collected, and has been near the top in all 10. The Chamber spent $21,160,000 in the first 6 months of 2007, with its largest contract going to Johnson, Madigan, Peck et al. The Chamber spent almost twice as much as the second organization on the list for 2007 (General Electric, 11,920,000). Rounding out the top five are the Pharmaceutical Researchers & Manufacturers of America, the American Medical Association and Amgen, Inc. (a biotech company that I had never previously heard of). It's not surprising, then, that the Chamber has maintained it's top position on the list of top spenders overall (from 1998-2007). These lists can be found here.

Total expenditures for the top lobbying firms in 2007 are close to those of the top groups/organizations. Patton Boggs is clearly the leader in this category, spending $17,330,000 so far in 2007. This power firm has held this top position for the last 4 years (previously Cassidy & Associates held the top spot, but both firms have always been on the list). Patton Boggs is also number one overall, expending $249,452,000 over the ten years profiled. However, PB does not have quite the lead over its colleagues as the Chamber does - the difference in expenditure amounts among the firms on this list is much smaller than the differences on the groups/organizations list. So far in 2007, Akin, Gump et al spent $15,120,000, putting them 2nd on the list. The top five for 2007 also contains Oglivy Government Relations (another firm I had never heard of), Cassidy & Associates and Barbour, Griffith & Rogers. The rest of the list can be found here.

The most potentially interesting data is that on the Top Contracts for 2007, but I will have to save my commentary on that for another day.