Big Pharma’s drug lobby machine (the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America) increased its financial arm-twisting of Congress by 25% in 2007 – in an effort to ward off competition and lock in bogus psychiatric medication sales to children.

Drug companies are struggling because their products don’t work for preventive health and they can’t make money just using them for appropriate uses. Their main trade group spent $22 million in 2007 to buy favors from Congress.

Partly this money was spent trying to maintain a legal monopoly – such as blocking less expensive drug re-importation, preventing fair-price drug negotiations for Medicare, manipulating patent laws to extend drug profits, and ensuring direct to consumer ads continue.

However, most of the increase in spending was to get Congress to reauthorize the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, a program to get and keep low-income kids on mind altering drugs – a cash cow worth billions for Big Pharma. These drugs cause permanent adverse alterations in the developing nervous system of children. There is a reason every school-related mass murder involves shooters that have been on psych drugs.

I’m all in favor of needed health care for any child. However, psych drugs do not replace the responsibility of parents to provide a home and family, the quality of food fed to children, and learning skills about how to live. Solving this problem is easy – provide health care for children but don’t cover the sale of any psych medication. Immediately you would find that Big Pharma no longer cares about children’s health.