True or false — highway robbery by the drug companies is the price we pay for innovative research? Judge for yourself — U.S. is the only high-income country that does not negotiate drug prices with big pharma. In the first half of 2019, the price of 3,400 drugs in the U.S. increased, but not in Europe. If Medicare, the largest buyer of medicines in the U.S. and together with Medicaid in the world, starts negotiating prices what are the consequences? The sky won’t fall but drug companies will be forced to do less profiteering. About that drug company-inspired myth that the end of outrageous pricing spells the end of innovation—guess where the research for the successful Pfizer mRNA vaccine originated — in drug price-regulated Germany. As a myriad of studies have found, industry’s enormous profits since the 1970s—the most profitable U.S. industry — have nothing to do with the amount it invests on R&D. What makes them rich is aggressive marketing and over the top pricing in the U.S. Two factors which cut Americans’ lives short. Even before the pandemic, Europeans lived three years longer than white Americans and six years longer than black Americans. “The greed of the prescription drug industry is literally killing Americans. All over this country, the American people are asking a simple question: How many people need to die, how many people need to get unnecessarily sicker, before Congress is prepared to take on the greed of the prescription drug industry.” [Bernie Sanders]. But feel-your-pain rhetoric won’t cut it anymore. The men and women we elect to Congress and to the White House should be answering these questions with action. Why aren’t they? Want to get the real skinny on the failure of politicians to stand up to Big Pharma when it counts? First buy a pitchfork and then read “Promising to Keep the U.S. Safe and Healthy, Military Contractors and Big Pharma Executives Cash In — Part 2: Pharma Execs on the Hot Seat.”
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