Washington Must Hold Big Pharma Accountable for Out-of-Control Drug Prices

Big Pharma has a long history of price gouging American patients through tactics used to game the system, such as patent thicketing and product hopping, to hinder generic competition and maintain monopolies over their biggest money makers. These tactics impose an unsustainable burden on patients and taxpayers, and lawmakers must build on bipartisan work to crack down on Big Pharma’s long standing abuse of the patent system.   

Key Takeaways:

  • A report from Matrix Global Advisors commissioned by the Coalition for Affordable Prescription Drugs found that the one-year cost of delayed competition from patent thickets on five brand name drugs would range from $1.8 billion to $7.6 billion. 
  • An investigation from the U.S. House Committee on Oversight found that delayed alternatives to just one blockbuster drug, AbbVie’s Humira, will cost the U.S. health care system an estimated $19 billion by 2023. Patent gaming around another brand name drug, Imbruvica, will cost the U.S. health care system $41 billion, according to an analysis from I-MAK.
  • A study from Avik Roy and Gregg Girvan of the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity (FREOPP) found Big Pharma’s patent abuse on biologic drugs alone will cost patients an additional $30 billion by 2029.

For decades, drug makers have gamed the patent system to block out competition and protect their profits – maintaining monopolies and driving up prices without making improvements to the medications patients need most. 

Anti-competitive abuses of the patent system by drug manufacturers should be stopped by enacting laws that apply stricter scrutiny to patent application and will curb these practices by having appropriate federal agencies apply scrutiny to potential patent abuses.

THE REAL CULPRIT OF OUT-OF-CONTROL DRUG PRICES? BIG PHARMA’S PRICE HIKES & SKYROCKETING LAUNCH PRICES

While Big Pharma pushes its supply chain blame game strategy, the industry’s repeated price hikes and skyrocketing launch prices for new drugs have contributed to an unprecedented crisis of prescription drug affordability. 

Big Pharma Hiked Prices on Hundreds of Prescription Drugs in January 2023

  • Big Pharma giants, including Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, Bristol Myers Squibb, Sanofi and more, started the new year by hiking drug prices on at least 587 brand name prescription drugs.

Nearly 800 Prescription Drugs in January 2022

Bloomberg coverage of the research notes that “over 47 percent of new drugs introduced in 2020 and 2021 cost more than $150,000 per year, compared to just nine percent of new drugs from 2008 to 2013.”.

  • Read more about how Big Pharma’s pricing practices are driving a crisis of affordability for cancer patients HERE.
  • Read more on how Big Pharma companies are angling to hike prices on COVID-19 vaccines and treatments as payment shifts to the private market HERE and HERE.
  • Read more about Big Pharma’s bogus claims that high R&D costs justify high prescription drug prices HERE.
  • Read more on how Big Pharma is on track to set record-high launch prices on new brand name drugs this year HERE.
  • Learn more about market-based solutions to hold Big Pharma accountable and lower prescription drug prices HERE.
PAID FOR BY CAMPAIGN FOR SUSTAINABLE RX PRICING