A citizen's health advocacy group says Sen. Dr. Frist conspired with the White House to engineer a secret midnight deal with pharmaceutical companies giving them broad protections against liability... in a defense bill.

Read more after the jump...

Here is how your government works:

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist conspired with the White House and industry lobbyists to sneak into legislation ironclad protection from lawsuits for vaccine manufacturers, according to a scathing report by a major citizens advocacy group.

The Public Citizen report, released Thursday, repeats information from a February story by Gannett News Service about the Tennessee Republican's role in the legislation.

That story reported that in December, Frist, along with House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., ordered the vaccine liability language inserted in a defense spending bill without debate and in violation of usual Senate practice.

Public Citizen obtained e-mails and documents written by the Biotechnology Industry Organization that show its role in talks with Frist and the White House about making it more difficult for people hurt by vaccines to win lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies.

"The intimacy of this, we think, is quite unusual," said Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen, about the relationship between the organization's lobbyists, Frist and the Bush administration. "We think it is an interesting case study of how the inside operation works in Washington."

Why am I not surprised? (Actually, I believe there was quite an uproar on the liberal internets when this happened, but the mainstream media mostly ignored it, like they do all the other inside deals engineered by their corporate masters.) Here is the press release from Public Citizen, which has a link to their full report. From the press release:

Frist inserted the shield provision into an already-completed conference report for the defense appropriations bill in the dead of night, with the aid of House Majority Leader Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.). Many of the members of the conference committee had never seen the language, let alone approved it. Committee leaders explicitly assured Democrats, made wary by rumors circulating in the preceding days, that no attempt would be made to insert the liability measure into the spending bill.

The shield is unnecessary because the government now can – and does – indemnify drug companies in contracts, using provisions saying that the government will cover costs in excess of the companies’ insurance.

The pharmaceutical industry used legions of influence-peddlers to push for the measure. The industry deployed at least 158 lobbyists to influence policies relating to vaccines and pandemic preparedness in 2004 and 2005, including 84 who were previously employed by the federal government. Of those, seven were former members of Congress, two were former top health care aides to Frist and another was the son of the speaker of the House.

"This is a case in which the drug industry used clout, stealth and cunning to put one over on Congress and the American public," said Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen. "The industry crafted a liability shield that is unprecedented in its scope and will literally allow it to harm innocent people and get off scot-free."

[..]

The drug industry has long been among the most generous contributors to congressional campaigns. The three lawmakers who were most responsible for the waiver’s passage were Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), who drafted the liability shield that served as a template for the text Frist inserted into the defense bill; Hastert, who enabled Frist to make his move; and Frist. Each of the three ranks in the top 10 in campaign contributions from the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries since the 2000 election cycle; together they have collected more than $1.2 million in total receipts.

And the other amazing thing is that you can buy yourself some government, wholesale, at pretty cheap prices in the big scheme of things. Which reminds me. Do you suppose Bush would have used his long sought after line item veto on a special-interest bought-and-paid for legislative amendment such a this?