By Kirell Lakhman

Quest and other diagnostic companies together contributed at least $20 million in lobbying efforts in their attempt to shape last year's efforts to pass healthcare reform in Washington.

According to a report in Med City News, "[t]he medical device industry spent a lot of money making sure its voice was heard in Washington during the healthcare reform kerfluffle at the end of last year, dropping more than $20 million on lobbying efforts for health issues at the US House and Senate, the White House and the Food & Drug Administration."

Depending on where you stand on the issue of enabling the federal government to spend more than $1 trillion to alter how the nation spends money on health care, the lobbying either helped the legislation get to where it is now — or contributed to its likely demise.

Citing filings made to the Lobbying Disclosure Act Database, during the fourth quarter last year "companies spanning the industry’s largest players and smallest fry spent amounts ranging from nearly $7 million (General Electric) and all of its subsidiaries, including GE Healthcare) to $9,000 (health information technology provider ZirMed ).

To be sure, the portion of the $20 million play paid by the diagnostics industry — test vendors as well as clinical labs — amounted to a drop in the bucket: Quest shelled out just over $226,000 in the fourth quarter; Life Technologies dropped $250,000; Inverness spent $30,000; Cepheid paid $100,000; Becton, Dickinson wrote checks totaling $215,000; and Varian bet $180,000.

The most voluble contributor during the period — Johnson & Johnson, which owns Veridex — spent nearly $2 million, while the least generous spender was GE Healthcare, which managed to squeeze out $20,000.