def _simplify_cols_and_drop(df, col):
    """ Function to merge similar columns together and drop original columns. """
    cols = df.columns[df.columns.str.contains(col)]
    df[col] = df.lookup(df.index, df[cols].notnull().idxmax(axis=1))
    df.drop(cols, axis=1, inplace=True)
    return df
