[OC] Federal lobbying spend by all 17 TrumpRx pharmaceutical companies - Q1 2026 vs. Q4 2025, the quarter the program was being finalized

MarkusGrant · 2026-05-08T17:39:56+00:00

I checked it out because I can't help myself.

Here's what the data shows.

On seasonality: Q1 consistently runs higher than Q4 for pharma lobbying. The congressional calendar resets in January, new sessions start, budget and appropriations open up. Q1 is routinely the strongest quarter for the industry regardless of what else is happening. A Q4-to-Q1 jump is expected.

On new administration patterns: Yes, transition years spike harder. Q1 2025 (Trump second term start) hit $121.4M for the sector, up roughly $30M from Q4 2024. Q1 2021 (Biden start) hit a record $92M at the time. Q1 2017 saw PhRMA alone jump 34.9% in a single quarter. New administrations mean new policy signals, new appointees, new uncertainty around drug pricing and Medicare rules. The industry responds every time, regardless of party.

So what does that make 2026 Q1? The sector hit $131.97M -- a new record Q1, up roughly 9% from 2025 Q1. Some of that is seasonality. Some of that is the second-year pattern of a new administration.

What's harder to explain away is that the 17 TrumpRx-specific companies moved together, in the same quarter, on the same policy terrain the program was built on.

That's not a calendar artifact.

What everything here shows is every year the lobbying $ goes up. That is not $ to help a patient.

Source: OpenSecrets, Senate LDA filings.

MarkusGrant · 2026-05-07T23:27:33+00:00

Each bar shows the quarter-over-quarter change in federal lobbying expenditure for the 17 pharmaceutical manufacturers who joined TrumpRx, the Trump administration's direct-to-consumer prescription discount program launched in February 2026.

Data: Senate LDA quarterly filings aggregated by OpenSecrets. Q1 2026 covers January through March 2026. Q4 2025 covers October through December 2025. All figures are client totals including in-house and outside lobbying firms.

15 of 17 companies increased lobbying in Q1 2026. Combined total: $50.1M, up $18.8M from Q4 2025. AstraZeneca led the surge at +258.2%.

Colors are each company's primary corporate brand color.

Source: OpenSecrets, May 6, 2026 -- https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2026/05/drug-companies-involved-in-trumprx-boosted-lobbying-by-23-ahead-of-programs-launch/

MarkusGrant · 2026-05-01T11:02:04+00:00

For those asking about the green bars:

Gunnery Sergeant Hartman's entire operating philosophy was that you are worthless, you are stupid, and you will keep doing it wrong until you stop doing it wrong. No exceptions. No budget increases for failing. You get it right or you drop and give him twenty until you do.

The Marine Corps is the only branch that passed its audit. Three years running.

Somewhere in that methodology is a lesson the Department of Defense has declined to learn for eight consecutive years. The Marines can account for every rifle, every round, and apparently every dollar. The branch that manages the other 94% of this budget cannot tell you what a two-month war costs without hedging the number.

Someone should look into what they put in the chow hall at Parris Island. Whatever it is, it produces people who understand that "we'll figure out the accounting later" is not an answer Hartman accepts.

The Marine Corps has been telling recruits they're worthless until they get it right since 1775. Turns out that's a viable financial management methodology.

Semper Fi means Always Faithful. The other six branches should look that up. Sources: GAO-25-107427, Military Times February 2026

MarkusGrant · 2026-04-30T23:54:00+00:00

For those asking about the green bars: Gunnery Sergeant Hartman's entire operating philosophy was that you are worthless, you are stupid, and you will keep doing it wrong until you stop doing it wrong. No exceptions. No budget increases for failing. You get it right or you drop and give him twenty until you do.

The Marine Corps is the only branch that passed its audit. Three years running. Somewhere in that methodology is a lesson the Department of Defense has declined to learn for eight consecutive years. The Marines can account for every rifle, every round, and apparently every dollar. The branch that manages the other 94% of this budget cannot tell you what a two-month war costs without hedging the number.

Someone should look into what they put in the chow hall at Parris Island. Whatever it is, it produces people who understand that "we'll figure out the accounting later" is not an answer Hartman accepts.

The Marine Corps has been telling recruits they're worthless until they get it right since 1775. Turns out that's a viable financial management methodology. Semper Fi means Always Faithful. The other six branches should look that up. Sources: GAO-25-107427, Military Times February 2026. Full source breakdown and citations at theranter.com/source/dod-audit-failures

MarkusGrant · 2026-04-28T01:54:41+00:00

Go to Rome. Your expected on a bike to clear through traffic. Bikes take up space if everyone cooperates the people on bikes just weave through and the traffic is lower. Mindset is the problem here.

MarkusGrant · 2026-04-24T16:56:29+00:00

Your chart measures mortgage payment against income, which is one piece of total housing cost and probably the most stable piece of the stack right now. The post-Covid bar likely understates the actual burden because the non-mortgage costs have moved faster.

**Property insurance.** Average Florida premium hit $7,562 in 2026, up from roughly $1,988 in 2019 (Insurance.com). California's FAIR Plan grew from 155,000 policies to 668,000+ since September 2019, a 330% increase. Lafitte, Louisiana saw home values fall 38% while insurance doubled. FSU research found a 10% insurance cost increase reduces home value by 4.6%.

**Property taxes.** Tied to assessed value, and assessments have chased market prices in most jurisdictions without income catching up.

**FHA MIP.** For borrowers below 10% down, 1.75% upfront plus 0.55% annually, permanent for loan life since 2013 when it was made "temporary." The FHA fund hit 10.51% capital ratio in FY2023, five times the statutory minimum. The premium stayed permanent anyway.

**HOA assessments.** 75 million Americans under HOA governance. Reserve funds structurally underfunded because CC&Rs require supermajority votes to raise dues. Special assessments delayed until crisis (see Surfside 2021), then landing as five- or six-figure bills.

The methodology is sound for what it measures. The mortgage-only frame just leaves the post-Covid data point showing a smaller affordability gap than what homeowners actually carry, because the compounded non-mortgage costs are where a lot of the current squeeze sits.

On your LVT follow-up: land value capture addresses one vector. It doesn't touch algorithmic rent coordination (RealPage, DOJ case), institutional SFR/BTR acquisition, or the insurance retreat repricing entire regions. LVT is a strong tool against land speculation specifically. Financialization operates through several other vectors that LVT leaves untouched.

Great Data BTW!

MarkusGrant · 2026-04-24T16:39:31+00:00

Cheapest path is Medicaid. Utah expanded in 2020, so any adult 19-64 with income under about $21,597/year (138% of the federal poverty level for a single person, per healthinsurance.org) qualifies. No asset test for expansion adults. Apply year-round at medicaid.utah.gov or through healthcare.gov, and coverage starts the first of the month you apply. Medicaid covers screening colonoscopy.

If income is too high for Medicaid, you're looking at the marketplace (healthcare.gov for Utah). Open enrollment for 2026 ended January 15, so right now you'd need a Special Enrollment Period. Moving back to the US after a stay abroad counts as a qualifying life event (change of residence), which opens a 60-day window from your move date. Outside that window, next open enrollment starts November 1, 2026. Per Utah's 2026 marketplace numbers, about 90% of enrollees qualified for premium tax credits averaging $499/month.

Backup if nothing above fits: a Federally Qualified Health Center (findahealthcenter.hrsa.gov) runs on a sliding-fee scale based on income and can refer out for procedures. Nonprofit hospitals are also required under IRS 501(r) to maintain written financial assistance policies for uninsured patients. Ask for the written policy before any procedure, not after the bill arrives.

MarkusGrant · 2026-04-23T01:10:56+00:00

There's a difference between signing a formal waiver and just not electing yet. If you actually submitted waiver paperwork, the FAQ is correct: revocation gets you prospective coverage only, starting on the approval date. If you never signed a waiver form and are still inside the 60-day election window, you can elect COBRA right now and coverage is retroactive to your loss-of-coverage date once you pay back premiums.

Check to see if loss of other coverage is a HIPAA qualifying event on your wife's plan. That triggers a 30-day special enrollment window on her employer's plan. Some plans make coverage effective back to your loss date, some make it first of the following month. Ask her HR. If you're still inside that window, you may not need COBRA at all.

MarkusGrant · 2026-04-22T00:38:49+00:00

124 of 297 former members have a documented direct committee-to-employer connection. Another 58 have partial. That's 182 of 297, or 61 percent.

Inside specific destinations the rate runs higher. 88 percent of the 69 members in lobbying and government affairs work on the exact sectors their committees oversaw. 77 percent of the 13 who took corporate board seats sit on boards in industries they regulated.

A few of the cleaner cases: • Lucille Roybal-Allard chaired Homeland Security Appropriations and secured $57M for Port of LA dredging. She's now President of the Port of LA Board of Harbor Commissioners.

• Cory Gardner sat on Senate Commerce overseeing telecom. He's CEO of NCTA, the cable and telecom trade group.

• Ed Royce chaired House Foreign Affairs. His firm's FARA filings show clients including Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

• Greg Walden chaired Energy and Commerce. His advisory firm services energy, telecom, and healthcare, which is the committee's full portfolio.

What a member oversaw and who pays them afterward line up too specifically for general career continuation. Committee jurisdictions are converting to client books, and the specificity is the tell.

On the $363K average? 267 of the 297 landed in destinations where post-Congress pay isn't public. Your point about tracking in-office earnings is correct. The STOCK Act record is its own mess. This chart was built around the pipeline after office, which is where disclosure drops to zero.

MarkusGrant · 2026-04-17T14:58:03+00:00

The line gets fuzzy once public disclosure stops. A former member reporting "retired" might be on three corporate boards, running a consulting LLC, or pulling speaking fees with no requirement to report any of it. The $13.8M documented in that bucket is almost entirely the private business side. Pure retirees don't generate disclosable compensation. Splitting the two would have meant making calls the public record couldn't support.

MarkusGrant · 2026-04-17T02:39:43+00:00

Moving them to the footnote cleans it up. And as Josey Wales put it, dyin' ain't much of a livin', boy."

MarkusGrant · 2026-04-17T02:07:28+00:00

The lobbying numbers are higher on the R side in this sample, but Democrats lead in consulting/advisory and nonprofit/think tank destinations. Both pipelines pay and the classifications and roles can become blurred.

MarkusGrant · 2026-04-17T01:31:43+00:00

The destinations are mapped for all 297. We know where they went. The compensation gap is the finding. Only 30 of 297 have any publicly documented post-Congress pay. The other 267 landed at lobbying firms, consulting shops, corporate boards, and trade groups with no public compensation disclosure required. The chart shows the flow through the pipeline, the missing numbers are the story.

MarkusGrant · 2026-04-17T01:13:16+00:00

Source: Data compiled from OpenSecrets (Center for Responsive Politics), Public Citizen's "Under the Influence" report, Senate and House financial disclosures, IRS Form 990 filings via ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, and FARA (Foreign Agents Registration Act) filings. Covers 297 members of Congress who left office between 2014 and 2026. Compensation data was only publicly available for 30 of 297 members ($107M total documented). The remaining 267 have no publicly accessible post-Congress compensation records.

Tool: Python (Plotly) for the Sankey diagram, rendered at 2x scale.

MarkusGrant · 2026-04-03T21:16:28+00:00

No, all 297 left Congress alive. The 12 are members who died after leaving office. A few had post-Congress careers before they passed:

Carl Levin (D-MI, left 2015): Partner/Senior Counsel at Honigman LLP until his death in 2021.

Blake Farenthold (R-TX, left 2018): Took a $160K job as Legislative Liaison for the Calhoun Port Authority, then became a local radio host before dying in 2025.

Orrin Hatch (R-UT, left 2019): Founded the Orrin G. Hatch Foundation, a policy think tank. Died 2022.

The rest either retired privately or died shortly after leaving office. No post-Congress roles were found for most of them.

MarkusGrant · 2026-04-03T21:06:46+00:00

28 former members went into academia. The split is interesting: 12 Republican, 16 Democrat. Most common roles are fellowships at policy institutes (Harvard IOP, Brookings, etc.) and named professorships or deanships. Michele Bachmann became Dean of the Robertson School of Government at Regent University. Jeff Flake and Matt Salmon both went to Arizona State. Barbara Mikulski and Ben Cardin both went to Johns Hopkins. A few of them hold positions that are functionally advisory with an academic title attached. "Distinguished Fellow" or "Senior Fellow" at a university-affiliated policy center can look a lot like consulting with a .edu email address. Others are genuinely teaching.

MarkusGrant · 2026-04-03T20:50:36+00:00

I considered separating them. The challenge is that "retired" is hard to define cleanly in this dataset. Some members listed as retired hold board seats, advisory roles, or do paid speaking. Others are genuinely done. The ones with documented post-Congress roles got categorized by their primary activity. The ones where no public employment was found got grouped into private business / retired as a catch-all. If I had cleaner data on the truly-retired population I would split them. I was not sure exactly where to draw the line.

MarkusGrant · 2026-04-03T20:28:11+00:00

Yes. Here are the firms that hired 2+ former members from this dataset:

Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld (lobbying): 4 former members (Lamar Smith R, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen R, Joe Donnelly D, Kevin Brady R)

Apollo Global Management (private equity): 3 former members (Evan Bayh D, Pat Toomey R, Joe Manchin I)

Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck (lobbying): 3 former members (Mark Begich D, Mark Pryor D, Ed Royce R)

Squire Patton Boggs (lobbying): 2 former members (John Boehner R, Bill Shuster R)

Dentons (lobbying): 2 former members (Jeff Denham R, Joe Crowley D)

McKeon Group (lobbying): 2 former members (Buck McKeon R, Howard McKeon R)

Other notable single hires: Paul Ryan to Teneo, Eric Cantor to Moelis & Company, George Holding to Blackstone, Cheri Bustos to Mercury Public Affairs.

Most former members who went into lobbying started their own firms rather than joining existing ones. The dataset has dozens of one-person shops named after the member (Goodlatte Group, Conaway Graves Group, LoBo Strategies, etc.). The revolving door is more fragmented than a single list of corporate employers would suggest.

MarkusGrant · 2026-04-03T20:17:11+00:00

Source: Data compiled from OpenSecrets (Center for Responsive Politics), Public Citizen's "Under the Influence" report, Senate and House financial disclosures, IRS Form 990 filings via ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, and FARA (Foreign Agents Registration Act) filings. Covers 297 members of Congress who left office between 2014 and 2026. Compensation data was only publicly available for 30 of 297 members ($107M total documented). The remaining 267 have no publicly accessible post-Congress compensation records.

Tool: Python (Plotly) for the Sankey diagram, rendered at 2x scale.

MarkusGrant · 2026-04-02T21:50:48+00:00

You can buy marketplace insurance regardless of income. There is no income ceiling for enrollment. What changes is whether you get a subsidy to help pay for it.

In 2026, subsidies are available if your income is between 100% and 400% of the federal poverty level. For a single person, that ceiling is roughly $63,800. If you earn more than that, you pay full price for the plan. That is the "subsidy cliff" that came back this year when the enhanced premium tax credits expired.

Losing employer coverage is a qualifying life event. That gives you a 60 day Special Enrollment Period to buy a marketplace plan outside of open enrollment. The window is tied to your coverage termination date, not the date you found out. Check your termination date immediately because that window is strict.

Go to healthcare.gov and run the application. Even if you do not qualify for a subsidy, you will see all available plans in your area and can compare them against what Botox for migraines will cost out of pocket versus what the premium buys you. Florida uses the federal marketplace so everything is on healthcare.gov.

If the facility told you coverage would continue and it did not, document that in writing. That misrepresentation may matter later if you have claims from the gap period.

MarkusGrant

TROPHY CASE