Highlights How Administration and Lawmakers Can Fix Loopholes Exploited by Pharmaceutical Companies to Keep Drug Prices High
A new editorial from The New York Times Editorial Board highlights how Big Pharma games the system to keep drug prices high and calls for reforms to increase competition and help lower drug prices for the American people.
The editorial board notes that Big Pharma relies on bogus rhetoric to oppose drug pricing solutions and highlights how the industry’s egregious practices are driving higher costs, saying, “drugmakers for decades have argued that patents are essential to American innovation. For all that lip service to medical advancement, though, a recent investigation by the House Oversight Committee concluded that market share is more likely the point. Twelve of the drugs that Medicare spends the most on are protected by more than 600 patents in total, according to the committee. Many of those patents contain little that’s truly new. But the thickets they create have the potential to extend product monopolies for decades. In so doing, they promise to add billions to the nation’s soaring health care costs — and to pharmaceutical coffers.”
The editorial board also highlights the staggering number of patents granted for existing drugs, “nearly 80 percent of the drugs associated with new patents between 2005 and 2015 were not new.”
Endorsing solutions to promote competition, the editorial board argues policymakers should “enforce existing standards… set a high standard for what deserves patent protection in the first place and then to honor it… improve the process for challenging bad patents… eliminate potential conflicts of interest… collaborate with other agencies… [and] let the public participate.”
Read the entire New York Times piece, “Save America’s Patent System” HERE.
Learn more about market-based solutions to hold Big Pharma accountable and lower drug prices HERE.