{"id":2674498,"date":"2026-10-02T08:20:00","date_gmt":"2026-10-02T12:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/utm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaignwhy-eric-cantor-going-to-head-big-pharma-is-the-swampiest-move-ever\/"},"modified":"2026-10-02T08:25:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T12:25:08","slug":"utm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaignwhy-eric-cantor-going-to-head-big-pharma-is-the-swampiest-move-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/utm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaignwhy-eric-cantor-going-to-head-big-pharma-is-the-swampiest-move-ever\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Eric Cantor Going To Head Big Pharma Is Super Swampy"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">22<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Futm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaignwhy-eric-cantor-going-to-head-big-pharma-is-the-swampiest-move-ever%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2674498&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>The article discusses the appointment of former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor as the new head of the Pharmaceutical Research adn Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), highlighting the negative perception of this move and its implications.It recalls Cantor&#8217;s 2014 primary defeat in Virginia, which was largely unnoticed by the national media and was rooted in his disconnect with constituents and perceived arrogance. After losing his seat, Cantor quickly transitioned to Wall Street, joining the investment bank Moelis &#038; Company, raising questions about his influence on industry and politics. The piece also reflects on PhRMA\u2019s past role in shaping healthcare policy,noting that leaders like Billy Tauzin previously supported Obamacare through behind-the-scenes deals that betrayed promises of openness.It emphasizes the influence of industry insiders and political swampiness in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/thune-favors-senate-healthcare-deal-with-bipartisan-pedigree\/\" title=\"Thune favors Senate healthcare deal with \u2018bipartisan pedigree\u2019\">shaping healthcare legislation<\/a>, warning that similar maneuvers could occur again under Cantor&#8217;s leadership. The author critiques the deep ties between industry, politics, and legislation, suggesting that such relationships have contributed to higher drug prices and a dysfunctional healthcare system.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<div>\n<p><em>Of course he did<\/em>. <\/p>\n<p>That cynical reaction perfectly summed up the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2026\/09\/29\/pharmas-new-top-lobbyist-is-a-former-house-majority-leader-01097057\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">recent news<\/a> that former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., will become the next head of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) in November. If not exactly a match made in heaven, the two seem made for each other \u2014 for many of the wrong reasons.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Cantor Lost His Congressional Job for Ignoring Constituents<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>People tend to forget that Cantor\u2019s June 2014 loss in a Republican congressional primary to future Rep. Dave Brat \u2014 the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2014\/06\/10\/320805587\/upset-of-eric-cantor-deals-a-shock-to-gop-establishment\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">first loss<\/a> by a House majority leader since the position\u2019s creation \u2014 was a secret hiding in plain sight. It wasn\u2019t just that Cantor went soft on immigration in ways that troubled his constituents; it\u2019s that Cantor had little time for his constituents, period. As a local Virginia-based reporter <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.ph\/ekey8\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">noted<\/a> after Cantor had lost:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>You could tell wherever you went that Cantor was incredibly unpopular, that people saw him as arrogant. \u2026 Dave Brat gave me his cellphone number when I first met with him, and I pretty much had him to myself.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>The local reporter \u201chad Brat to himself\u201d because national reporters didn\u2019t bother to \u2014 or want to \u2014 cover the Brat-Cantor race. As The New York Times <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.ph\/ekey8\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">put it<\/a>, \u201cNo one wants to stray from the white-hot center of power for fear of being stuck in some forsaken locale when something big happens in Washington.\u201d (Talk about swampy.) And do you think the corporate media would listen to the likes of Glenn Beck, Mark Levin, or Laura Ingraham when they promoted Brat over Cantor on their shows? Me neither.<\/p>\n<p>Even when they did cover the race, national reporters largely missed the plot. Six weeks before the primary, Jake Sherman, then of Politico, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/story\/2014\/04\/eric-cantor-virginia-republicans-106075.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">wrote<\/a>, \u201cBrat has little chance of upsetting Cantor \u2026 who will almost certainly become the next speaker of the House.\u201d We\u2019re still waiting for that prediction to come true (thankfully). Therein lies the story of that election: a swampy congressman and the swampy press, neither of whom could be bothered to listen to, or care about, what voters actually thought. It turns out both of them had something coming to them.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>After Getting Fired by Voters, Cantor Went to Wall Street<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Shortly after losing his primary, Cantor left Congress. He didn\u2019t even wait to finish out his term, quitting in August 2014. Within weeks, the New York investment bank Moelis and Company announced it <a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20140914080214\/http:\/www.moelis.com\/News\/SitePages\/news-feed-details.aspx?feedId=248\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">had hired Cantor<\/a>, who ended up staffing the company\u2019s Washington office.<\/p>\n<p>The move brought with it ironies related to both his past job and his future one. After having been rejected by voters for not having views that comported with theirs, Cantor decamped to a place even further removed from the American heartland and Main Street. But now, having spent the past decade-plus at a firm that advises big corporations on mergers and acquisitions, will he bring his Wall Street connections to bear if some combination of Congress and the administration \u2014 either President Trump or a future Democrat one \u2014 attempts to squeeze the pharmaceutical industry?<\/p>\n<h2><strong>PhRMA\u2019s Republican Lobbyist Helped Pass Obamacare<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>As someone who worked on Capitol Hill during the debate on Obamacare in 2009-2010, I recall that the head of PhRMA at the time was another former Republican member of Congress: Rep. Billy Tauzin, R-La., who had served as chairman of the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee, with jurisdiction over most health care programs. <\/p>\n<p>While working as PhRMA head, Tauzin played a key role in helping get Obamacare enacted. His organization and the pharmaceutical sector became the first to make a \u201cbackroom deal\u201d with Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., then the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and the Obama administration in support of Obamacare. In fact, Tauzin <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/08\/06\/health\/policy\/06insure.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">bragged<\/a> to The New York Times about what a good agreement he got for his industry:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n[The White House]  wanted a big player to come in and set the bar for everybody else. \u2026 We were assured: \u201cWe need somebody to come in first. If you come in first, you will have a rock-solid deal.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Not only did PhRMA make an agreement to support Obamacare, but it also ran ads supporting the legislation \u2014 ads run by White House adviser <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/story\/2009\/08\/axelrods-ties-targeted-in-health-fight-026240#ixzz0OdWlsJVa\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">David Axelrod\u2019s firm<\/a>, which just so happened to owe Axelrod <a href=\"https:\/\/www.juniperresearchgroup.com\/post\/2296\/big-pharma-and-david-axelrod-2-million-of-change-you-can-believe-in\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">$2 million in severance<\/a> and employ his son.<\/p>\n<p>But all the behind-the-scenes wheeling and dealing also went directly against Barack Obama\u2019s promise that all the health care negotiations would be televised on C-SPAN, as he pledged repeatedly during his 2008 campaign:<\/p>\n<figure>\n<p><span><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"obama C span\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Api4fUziAnI?start=5&#038;feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><\/span> <\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<p>The \u201crock-solid deal\u201d was the most <a href=\"https:\/\/www.juniperresearchgroup.com\/post\/2320\/barack-obama-and-big-pharma-hypocrisy-you-can-believe-in\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">infamous example<\/a> of the swamp in action. And the public has been paying the price ever since Obamacare\u2019s passage, in the form of increasing consolidation leading to higher prices, as even <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2023\/12\/01\/like-trump-elizabeth-warren-believes-obamacare-sucks\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Democrats now admit<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>PhRMA and a swampy former Republican congressman helped cook up a royal mess for the American people a decade and a half ago. God help us with what will happen during the sequel.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<div>\n<p>      Chris Jacobs is founder and CEO of Juniper Research Group and author of the book &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/dp\/1645720020\">The Case Against Single Payer<\/a>.&#8221; He is on Twitter: <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/chrisjacobsHC\">@chrisjacobsHC<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cantor\u2019s move to PhRMA reflects a troubling industry link<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":521,"featured_media":2674499,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/cantor.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33651],"tags":[39919,8773,86596,4606,5894],"class_list":["post-2674498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-western-journal","tag-big-pharma","tag-corruption","tag-eric-cantor","tag-healthcare","tag-politics"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/cantor.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2674498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/521"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2674498"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2674498\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2674502,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2674498\/revisions\/2674502"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2674499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2674498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2674498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2674498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}