The CGCN Group, a Republican lobbying firm, confirmed to STAT that it has played a role in the launch of a new pro-pharma advocacy group, the Alliance to Protect Medical Innovation.
Eight things to know:
1. The Alliance to Protect Medical Innovation launched Oct. 3 as "a nonpartisan 501(c)(4) organization, committed to fostering a national conversation on medical innovation and patient access to care that is holistic and fact-based."
2. The alliance's website does not include funding details. However, the group acknowledged that it relied on some "seed money from people inside the [pharma] industry," according to STAT.
3. The alliance's website also does not include a staff list. Ken Spain, partner at CGCN Group, which is also a communications firm, told STAT: "APMI is our client and is in the process of naming the executive director. We are helping them with the rollout of the organization."
4. As the alliance gets off the ground, it is defending high drug list prices and speaking out against insurers and pharmacy benefit managers.
5. Patients for Affordable Drugs told STAT the group "should disclose its funders immediately," and described the alliance's approach as "misleading, self-serving 'facts' with the same old threat: your money or your life."
6. According to the report, Patients for Affordable Drugs also claimed the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America helped finance the effort. PhRMA and APMI deny the assertion.
7. APMI said in a website post Oct. 4: "Activists and media outlets assumed we were just a front group for PhRMA. Sadly, this is exactly why we launched the alliance. The debate over drug costs has become so corrosive and one-sided that we wanted to introduce a new voice that could point out some basic facts about the groundbreaking medicines developed by biopharmaceutical companies."
8. In the same post, APMI also said it "actually [doesn't] have a lot of funders to reveal. We have been given some seed money from people inside the industry, but our aim is to add as many people, from as many walks of life, as possible. And when we do, we will start disclosing those names."
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