Under the Influence: How Lobbyists Wrote and Bought the Rx Drug Bill

I saw this segment of 60 minutes last night.. Very disturbing...

60 Minutes tells the story of how pharmaceutical industry lobbyists literally wrote the historic Medicare Prescription Drug Bill and twisted arms to get the necessary votes to have it passed in the middle of the night. Correspondent Steve Kroft documents how many of the congressmen and staffers who worked on the bill later went on to work for the drug companies their legislation helped enrich.

"The pharmaceutical lobbyists wrote the bill," says [Republican Congressman Walter] Jones. "The bill was over 1,000 pages. And it got to the members of the House that morning, and we voted for it at about 3 a.m. in the morning….I've been in politics for 22 years, and it was the ugliest night I have ever seen in 22 years."