Candidates for New Jersey’s Senate Seat Spar over Prescription Drug Issue

Representatives from Sen. Robert Torricelli's (D-N.J.) re-election campaign on June 6 said that the senator's Republican opponent Douglas Forrester "made his fortune in business by unfairly inflating the price of medications," the New York Times reports. Forrester is president of BeneCard Services Inc., a prescription benefit manager; he has a $50 million stake in the company. Speaking at a news briefing at the New Jersey State House, Torricelli's campaign staff, Democratic colleagues and several doctors and "critics of the health care system" said that companies like BeneCard "have become a predatory part of the drug delivery system and had failed to deliver the savings they promised consumers." After the briefing, Torricelli's campaign manager Ken Snyder said Forrester "makes enormous profits for processing claims and making average people pay exorbitant prices for medicine."

Disputing the Claims
Representatives of the Forrester campaign "vehemently disputed" the claim that PBMs such as BeneCard are responsible for increasing prescription drug costs. Forrester campaign manager Bill Pascoe said that "much of the increase" can be attributed to pharmaceutical manufacturers. He also said that Torricelli accepts the most drug industry campaign money of any member of Congress. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, a non-partisan group, Torricelli has accepted $85,000 from pharmaceutical companies and their political action committees this year, the second-highest amount among federal lawmakers. "Bob Torricelli appears to be a vacuum cleaner when it comes to accepting PAC money from pharmaceutical companies," Pascoe said, adding, "For him to be criticizing Doug Forrester, who finds ways to make prescriptions more affordable for his clients, is outrageous." The "clash" over prescription costs will likely be "repeated frequently" during the campaign, the Times reports (Kocieniewski, New York Times, 6/7).