Moments After Abdul Called Rogers Out For Being Bankrolled By Big Pharma During Debate, Rogers Reported A Contribution From A Lobbyist With Pharma Ties 

MICHIGAN – Moments after Mike Rogers stepped off the debate stage – where Abdul El-Sayed called him out for being bankrolled by Big Pharma and being the industry’s self-proclaimed “champion” – Rogers filed a fundraising report showing he had just cashed yet another check from a lobbyist tied to the pharmaceutical industry. 

7:08 PM: On the debate stage, Abdul called out Mike for the “$1 million, more than 95 percent of Congress that he took from Big Pharma, and then voted 19 times to keep your prescription drug prices high,” adding that Rogers “does not want to talk about his own record when it comes to bowing down to the corporations who make your life harder and charge you more for the things that you need in your life.”

8:19 PM: Rogers filed a fundraising report showing a contribution from a current lobbyist and former head of government affairs at Jazz Pharmaceuticals, a pharma company with a history of stifling competition to maximize profits. 

REMINDER: 

Mike Rogers has taken more than $1 million from the pharmaceutical industry and called himself the industry’s “champion”

Mike Rogers has received more than $1 million in contributions from the pharmaceutical industry and called himself their “champion.” 

Rogers was “dogged” by his “ties to opioid industry,” who bankrolled his campaigns while Rogers “sponsored legislation in the House that would have encouraged broader access to opioids but failed to regulate its use.”

Rogers repeatedly opposed measures that would lower drug costs, including voting 19 times against lowering drug costs.

In Congress, Rogers voted 19 times against “allowing Medicare to negotiate lower prices with drug manufacturers” while his campaigns were being “bankrolled” by Big Pharma. 

Rogers has said he is “passionately against” allowing Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices for seniors, which he referred to as “sugar high politics.”

Rogers voted for Republican budget bills that sought to “replace Medicare’s guarantee of coverage with a voucher-based program, raise the age of eligibility from 65 to 67, and shift substantial treatment costs to Medicare beneficiaries.”

Rogers voted four times against allowing reimportation of drugs from foreign countries like Canada where the same medications were significantly cheaper.  

Rogers opposed the bipartisan Inflation Reduction Act, which lowered prescription drug prices and capped the cost of insulin at $35.

Rogers opposed letting the government negotiate drug prices for veterans while his Big Pharma donors fought to protect their profits.

Rogers opposed federal drug price controls for pharmacies serving military servicemembers and veterans, arguing that price controls could hurt innovation – one of his Big Pharma donors’ talking points. 

A group of Rogers’ donors sued over the government’s policy of negotiating prescription drug prices for servicemembers and veterans, and Rogers continued opposing government drug-price negotiations and voted against them in 2011.

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