Ten companies have accounted for more than a quarter of health-sector lobbying -- $70 million -- this year, according to our analysis of lobbyist data from the Center for Responsive Politics.

Not all spending was necessarily related to the health care legislation, and some insurers -- notably, America's Health Insurance Plans and Blue Cross/Blue Shield -- did not figure into the analysis because they fell outside CRP's five health-related industries: pharmaceuticals/health products, hospitals/nursing homes, health professionals, health services/HMOs and miscellaneous health.

• All told, 1,454 health-sector companies spent $263 million lobbying this year. That's just slightly more than half of what was spent over all of 2008.
• Half of this year's spending ($133 million from 291 companies) came from companies that have been lobbying every year since 1998, the furthest back the CRP data goes.
• 5.8 percent of this year's spending came from companies new to lobbying in 2008 ($11 million from 171 companies) or 2009 ($4.3 million from 72 companies). Those were companies that had no lobbying records since 1998.

One of the companies that hadn't lobbied before 2008 was the Ambulatory Surgery Center Association, an group advocating for facilities that provide surgical services to patients who don't require hospitalization. The ASCA -- which was fourth-highest in spending this year among companies that hadn't lobbied in the decade prior to 2008 -- spent $420,000 in the first half of this year.

One of the group's goals is to lobby the government to move more procedures to Ambulatory Surgery Centers rather than hospitals, a spokeswoman said, noting that it would save the government money: "ASCs right now get paid 59 percent of what hospital outpatient departments get paid to perform the same procedures."

One of the companies that started lobbying this year is Dossia, a new nonprofit that securely collects health records for the employees (and other qualifying individuals) of its funders. The information is available to the employees for life regardless of whether they switch insurers, doctors or employers. Dossia, the fifth-largest first-timer this year, is funded by a group of large companies including AT&T, Applied Materials, BP America, Intel Corporation, Pitney Bowes and Wal-Mart, to name a few.