Writing in Time magazine, Karen Tumulty and Michael Schererreport that Big Pharma's efforts to protect their interests in health care reform amounts to an expenditure of $609,000 per day, and "they're getting a pretty good return on their investment," Tumulty told CNN's John King on Thursday.

"It's not just the lobbyists," Tumulty said. "The money goes into a lot of other things. It finances a lot of so-called research, expert reports, consultant reports. A lot of do-good organizations are springing up with names that sound like quite beneficial organizations, but you look at them and it turns out the whole thing is being run by drug companies."

As evidence of drugmakers' clout on the Hill