Payer Lobbying May Pale Next to Pharma, but Experts Say Industry Still Packs Clout

  • Nov 18, 2022

    While lobbying expenditures from the health care industry have been rising in recent decades, drugmakers and providers — not insurers — are the main drivers of that spending growth, according to recent research. Still, experts tell AIS Health, a division of MMIT, that the managed care sector’s influence over policy shouldn’t be underestimated. 

    “Overall, the fact that the industry keeps lobbying means that this investment has some good return; otherwise, they would have stopped,” says Ge Bai, Ph.D., a professor at Johns Hopkins University’s schools of business and public health.  

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  • Leslie Small

    Leslie has been working in journalism since 2009 and reporting on the health care industry since 2014. She has covered the many ups and downs of the Affordable Care Act exchanges, the failed health insurer mega-mergers, and hundreds of other storylines spanning subjects such as Medicaid managed care, Medicare Advantage, employer-sponsored insurance, and prescription drug coverage. As the managing editor of Health Plan Weekly and Radar on Drug Benefits, she writes and edits for both publications while overseeing a small team of reporters who also focus on the managed care sector. Before joining AIS Health, she was a senior editor for the e-newsletter Fierce Health Payer, and she started her career as a copy editor at multiple local newspapers. She graduated with a dual degree in journalism and political science from Penn State University.

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