Copyright 1999 The Columbus Dispatch
The Columbus
Dispatch
November 19, 1999, Friday
SECTION: EDITORIAL & COMMENT, Pg. 10A
LENGTH: 444 words
HEADLINE:
FLYING BLIND HATCH'S CONFLICT OF INTEREST SEEMS OBVIOUS
BODY:
Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, claims that
he sees no conflict of interest when he uses a private jet supplied by
pharmaceutical giant Schering-Plough to campaign for his party's presidential
nomination.
Hatch reimburses the company in accordance with federal
election laws, but the use of the Gulfstream G-IV, estimated to cost $ 2,800 an
hour to operate, is still a bargain, as the repayment has to be only in the
amount of a first-class airline ticket to the same destinations flown on the
campaign trail.
The letter of the law, if not its spirit, is being
followed. Fine. But the sticking point is that Schering- Plough has a lot at
stake in courting Hatch's favor; the company is seeking a
patent-extension for its megaprofit-producing allergy
medication, Claritin. The patent issue for some time has been bottled up by its
opponents on the Senate Judiciary Committee, of which Hatch is chairman.
Claritin, introduced in 1993, provides tens of thousands of allergy
sufferers with relief and without the nasty side effects of other
antihistamines. This drug alone, at about $ 2.50 per dose, generated about $ 2
billion in revenue for Schering-Plough last year. But makers of generic drugs
say they can produce an equivalent medication for about 50 cents per dose when
the Claritin patent expires in 2002.
Obviously, Schering-Plough's
profits would take a huge hit, but granting its request for a three-year
extension would cost consumers $ 7 billion, according to a study by University
of Minnesota researchers.
A conflict of interest is not hard to see here
-- except in Hatch's camp. "The fact that an owner of a plane may have something
pending before Congress does not affect the decisions that are made,'' said
Hatch campaign spokesman Ron Rogers, who, other than in the light of that
statement, does not resemble Pollyanna.
A few days after Rogers'
comment, The New York Times reported that high-powered allies of Schering-Plough
on Capitol Hill have been trying to get the patent extension approved by
sneaking it through as part of a must- pass spending bill.
Those allies
were named as Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., Sen. Robert
Torricelli, D- N.J., chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee,
and Hatch. But the increasing news-media attention and public exposure of the
patent issue doomed any attempt at a quiet approval for extension. It is dead,
at least for this term of Congress.
Perhaps Hatch can see now that an
increasingly disenchanted public was diagnosing his ties to Schering-Plough as
another symptom of the rash disregard members of this Congress have for the
people who elected them.
GRAPHIC: Phot
LOAD-DATE: November 20, 1999 
