Serenity, you included the same link twice. But if the drift of the second article, regarding pharma companies, is the same as the one about the trial lawyers, there sure doesn't seem to be much hope for meaningful tort reform or constraints that would interfere with the drug companies making exhorbitant profits.

I recall seeing a 60 Minutes show on the way the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003 (Medicare Part D) was passed by the House. The story was maddening. The actual bill was written by the largest pharmaceutical lobbying firm PhRMA and only introduced to the members of Congress on the morning on which the bill would be considered for a vote. None of the members of the House ever read the final bill. When the vote was called, unlike normal House procedures which gave members 15 minutes to register their vote, the vote was held open for three hours. During that time, both members of the House and representatives of PhRMA pressured the few members needed to achieve passage of the legislation to change their votes. With the money that was at risk by the drug companies, buying those last few needed votes was like shooting ducks in a barrel.

What was even more infuriating was the listing of what the 10-12 people who were instrumental in getting the bill passed were doing two years later. The key people included two Congressmen and several senior House staffers. Each and every one of them had left politics for highly lucrative jobs, either with lobbying firms themselves or with drug companies within a couple of years after the bill was passed. The key House member, Representative Billy Tauzin (R-LA), who steered the bill thru the House resigned from the House less than a year later and now has a job with PhRMA paying about $2 million a year.

If you want to read and see the 60 Minutes show, navigate to http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/...05.shtml...but prepare to really get your dander up.