“Companies are buying decades-old prescription drugs and jacking up prices on vulnerable patients. It’s unconscionable. We need more transparency and competition in the prescription drug market to protect Americans from this appalling practice.”
“Recently, the FDA took an important first step in acknowledging the need to introduce more competition by prioritizing generic applications where there is no competition. This effort will give patients better access to affordable treatments,” said John Rother, executive director of the Campaign for Sustainable Rx Pricing.
Today the National Coalition of Health Care announced that AARP has officially joined the coalition’s Campaign for Sustainable Rx Pricing. AARP is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization, with a membership of nearly 38 million Americans and shares the Campaign’s goal of finding market-based solutions to reverse the trend of high and rising prescription drug prices.
Seven presidential candidates are still in the race heading into Super Tuesday and all of them are talking about rising prescription drug prices. While they differ in their solutions to this epidemic, candidates on both sides of the aisle agree that drug prices are rising at an unsustainable rate.
“Today’s AARP report provides new evidence that drug companies are raising prescription drug prices on patients indiscriminately. Specialty and branded drugs alike are going up six times faster than inflation. The exorbitant increases make health care more expensive for families, taxpayers, and job creators and put a major strain on federal and state governments. It’s going to take market-based policy solutions to deal with this unsustainable trend.”
Over the next few days, Nevadans of both political parties will caucus to choose their presidential nominee — the Democrats on Saturday, and Republicans on Tuesday in the first-of-the-West caucuses. As candidates travel the state in an effort to woo potential caucus-goers, there will be many public policy disagreements.
Crippling drug prices have quickly become one of the hottest topics in health care. Consumers, patients, state budgets and public programs are feeling the burden, and reports show that we’re just getting started.
Daraprim’s price hike was outrageous. But prices on prescriptions that are more widely used also continue to climb. Since the beginning of January, pharmaceutical giant Pfizer has raised prices on more than 100 of its prescription drugs, according to Reuters. Some of those drugs, like medicines used to help treat symptoms of menopause or combat seizures, went up by more than 20 percent. What’s more, Pfizer did not reduce the price of any prescriptions.
Prescription drug prices are rising at an alarming pace and the problem is far more widespread than a few bad actors.
In just the past year, prices have been jacked up on hundreds of medications. The dirty secret is that Big Pharma’s price increases far exceed Daraprim’s. They contribute to BILLIONS in Medicare spending and are used by MILLIONS of Medicare beneficiaries. Below we will take a look at just 30 of those medications.