A group called Public Citizen has advice about how to bring down the high cost of prescription drugs:
Asthma.
COVID-19.
Diabetes.
Hepatitis C.
HIV.
Prostate cancer.
Millions of Americans who suffer from these conditions (and others) can’t afford the medicine they need.
Why?
Because of sheer greed on the part of pharmaceutical companies.
- For the 20 top-selling drugs, Big Pharma made more in the U.S. than in every other country on Earth combined.
- That’s particularly outrageous given how much research and development is paid for by the American people. (The taxpayer-funded National Institutes of Health alone spends $40 billion a year on R&D.)
- In essence, we are paying through the nose not once but twice!
But We the People can fight Big Pharma’s immoral price gouging.
The federal government can overcome patent monopolies by authorizing generic competition — either for products it will pay for (like medicines purchased through Medicare) or for publicly-funded medications.
Generic competition is a game-changer: The FDA has found that the introduction of generics can lead to price reductions of 95%.
And, crucially, the federal government *already* has the power to do this — which would be transformative in making essential medicines affordable for millions of Americans.
To proceed, we don’t need Congress to do anything. The Biden administration can act on its own.
Tell the Biden Administration:
Thank you for taking action.
For progress,
– Robert Weissman, President of Public Citizen
Public Citizen | 1600 20th Street NW | Washington DC 20009 |
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This has hit us, with your asthma medication.
My YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHjisgsBkBBUrDwUDLrFuVA
>
Diane: Thank you for posting this. While we are at it, FRONTLINE is running a three-part series about BIG OIL on PBS and how they “highjacked” their own science about the dangers of oil-caused climate change for decades by systematically introducing doubt to the narrative at every level of discourse.
In the scheme of things where power is concerned, these Pharma and Oil people (including the Kock brothers and their industries) make Big Tobacco executives look like purse snatchers.
As an educational aside, and at the core of things, we can look to neo-liberals and their capitalist greed, coupled with racist, antisemite, Muslim (pick your group bias) snobbery/hate and religious totalitarianism (e.g., Devos) for the present slide towards the demise of democracies.
Of course, it’s complex, however, THE fundamental OVERSIGHT over decades is the intimate relationship that MUST exist, but doesn’t here in the US, between democratic states and civilization, through their lively PUBLIC institutions of education which are THE civilizing factor.
Most of what we see with authoritarian and other Trump-type thinking (and also now in France) is un-tempered, self-serving, ill-directed passion that fuels an increasing loss of basic civility, as in civilization. Many educators here speak often about the difficulty they have had over the years educating in ways they know are essential but are disappearing . . . being quite literally eaten up by neo-liberal thinking that cannot even THINK any more in terms of a right relationship between capitalist and public institutions.
At the philosophical level, we have experienced what some refer to as “The Neglect of the Subject.” It’s all about hyper-objectivity where students are bored to death with information-in, information-out most exemplified in bubble tests and too-big class sizes. Who cares about the personal development of students, including political awareness and a deepening of thought that comes with humanities and the arts.
There’s no money in it.
Good teachers know, of course, who are apparently getting out of “education” in herds as the shallow-minded and hateful who use misguided passion, brute force, lies, hypocrisy, stolen money, and the freedoms we still have: to kill the source of those very freedoms for us all.
Big Pharma is despicable and seems to belong to a very large club. CBK
Here is something that I have been posting for years as a Comment on every Facebook page where I feel the Comment is appropriate. Feel free to copy and paste, with no need to attribute it:
The Los Angeles Times reports that about 75% of the most innovative and expensive drugs trace their existence to taxpayer money through research done by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and by tax-funded public university research. So, Big Pharma’s scare tactic about them spending less money on research is fake because the basic research that they use is developed with taxpayer money. Public-paid-for research should be forever in the public domain so that many, many pharmaceutical firms can use it, not just Big Pharma companies. The more competition, the lower prices and the more availability of medicines.
Congress, under both Democratic or Republican control, has long had the power to lower drug prices and to break monopolies on drugs by forcing Big Pharma companies to license low-cost generic drugs to be made; here’s the law: The 1980 Bayh-Dole Act is a federal patent law that includes drug patents and gives the federal government the authority to REQUIRE that any pharmaceutical company whose drug was developed in any way with TAXPAYER MONEY must grant a license to a GENERIC DRUG COMPANY that can produce and sell the drug or vaccine cheaper — or provide it free to We the People. ENFORCE THE BAYH-DOLE ACT!!!
You’re correct. I found this all out 10-12 yrs ago when my mother’s meds skyrocketed due to orphan drug laws. The problem is that the big companies ate up all the little companies that were providing the lower cost drugs. Then the big companies moved production over seas making it impossible for the drug to be provided for free/low cost. Then the next step was to make it impossible for patients to purchase these same drugs from Canada or from over seas. Big Pharma is about as sleazy as it gets and it’s aided and abetted by our own government.
Oh and some of the “new” drugs being advertised on TV are just rebranded/renamed/repriced $$$$ drugs that had been used for decades without the “proper” clinical trials. Meaning that the drug was R&D/trialed for one use but turned out to be more useful for a different condition. The drug companies took advantage of that. They pulled them off the market and did a very small clinical trial before turning out a “new” drug. Makes me sick.
While I am a supporter of Public Citizen and I agree with the idea of ending or severely curtailing Patent Protection on drugs and most other tech. Essentially they are a Government sponsored monopoly whose lengths have been increased over the decades. As Dean Baker says a 17th century solution to fund research in the 21st Century. One that costs the American people 400 Billion in additional spending above generics. 400 Billion out of their tax dollars for Medicare , Medicaid , the Veterans Administration the Defense Department and their personnel pockets.
All for the approximate 50 billion or so Pharma spends on research, while the Government contributes 40 billion plus from NIH and the Defense dept…. Much of that private research on copycat drugs that are similar to a competitors drug or like the “Tiny Purple Pill ” Nexium, replacing the patent on Prilosec which was expiring.
What I am uncertain of is the administrations ability to do much that will hold up in the SCOTUS. Patents are clearly an article 1 power granted to the Congress. And while the Constitution does not mean much to this court. It is not happening with this court.
I want to retch every time I see want of those commercials that say a drug company may be able “to help” if you cannot afford your medication.
They can and they will help. It’s a lot of paperwork to fill out by the patient, the GP and or the specialist doing the prescribing. The paperwork has to be updated frequently and the medication has to be ordered via a special phone number or email site before it is delivered (by mail) to the patient. They make it so hard that most people give up initially or aren’t able to continue with the medication due to confusion. It is truly a sin what ill people (or a family member) must do to get a needed medication. It was like a part time job for me when my mother was alive and unwell. It can be done, though.
You made my point for me. You have to jump through hoops to get medication that you could most likely get much cheaper either from Canada or overseas. How generous for them to offer assistance (snark intended).
It was my own personal “big win” over Big Pharma since our politicians didn’t seem to care that ill people could not afford medications. It was the least I could do for my mother in her late and unwell years. Many hoops to jump through and many hours spent on the phone being transferred and listening to bad Muzak and stupid drug ads. I am always happy to offer these tips to others.
Your mother was very lucky to have you. There are too many people who don’t have that support or the resources to jump through those hoops. I am thinking of the care a friend’s husband was given at the public hospital, which has to treat everyone and the private hospital he eventually was able to afford when they got insurance again. There are therapies and drugs that aren’t even considered or offered when you are limited in the healthcare you can receive. Thank goodness for the Affordable Care Act! At least that is a step in the right direction.
We have spent some time jumping through some of those hoops even on insurance. Insurance companies seem to take particular delight in changing the drugs on their formulas. First you have to document that none of their choices works adequately, not even as well as whatever drug they have disallowed, before you can even attempt to get the drug that worked previously. That’s even before you try to negotiate cost. Is it any wonder that the main reason for bankruptcy in this country is because of out of control medical costs?