Big Pharma corporations are killing and bankrupting Americans for profit. They are charging us outrageous prices for life-saving and sustaining medications, far more than what they charge in other wealthy countries. Even worse? These medications were developed with our public taxpayer dollars!
A new report from the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee shows the prices that Big Pharma is charging Americans for prescription drugs developed with the help of scientists from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH). They found that Americans are paying as much as five times more than people in other wealthy countries for the exact same drug!
To take just one example, the cancer drug Velcade was developed with help from the publicly funded NIH. Takeda Oncology (formerly Millennium Pharmaceuticals) charges $11,000 for Velcade in France — and $54,000 in the USA. That’s because these companies are allowed to charge whatever they want, and what they want is to charge us by far the highest prices in the world.
Our government spends over $50 billion a year on developing new treatments and cures. These medications belong to the American people, not to the Big Pharma companies that are massively overcharging us for them.
Last year, Democrats passed the Inflation Reduction Act which gives Medicare the power to negotiate lower prices on key prescription drugs. This is the most significant legislation in US history to lower drug prices, but, because of pharmaceutical cash corrupting the process, it also doesn’t go nearly far enough.
With Kevin McCarthy (who has received over $2 million in campaign donations from Big Pharma) in control of the US House, Congress is highly unlikely to take further action to lower prescription drugs before the next election.
The good news is that President Joe Biden has the power to take on Big Pharma’s greed and substantially lower drug prices through executive action, without Congress. Biden’s nominee for NIH director, Dr. Monica Bertagnolli, should make a commitment: Every time the public funds a drug, that drug will be available to Americans and everyone around the world at a reasonable price.
These are our drugs, and we must stand up and demand that our government stop the Big Pharma rip-off.
Alex Lawson is the Executive Director of Social Security Works, the convening organization of the Strengthen Social Security Coalition — a coalition made up of over 340 national and state organizations representing over 50 million Americans.
From The Progressive Populist, July 1-15, 2023
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