Pills spilling out of a prescription bottle on 100 dollar paper currency
Can high prescription drug prices become more affordable?
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Scott LaMar
Pills spilling out of a prescription bottle on 100 dollar paper currency
Airdate: Thursday, August 10, 2023
Many Pennsylvanians are cutting their pills in half, skipping a dose, or don’t get their prescriptions filled because they can’t afford their medications. In the first half of last month alone, 59 drug manufacturers raised prices on 105 brands.
The cost of prescription drugs is near the top of the list of healthcare concerns for many Americans. At the same time, Pfizer had revenues last year of $100.3 billion, and Johnson and Johnson brought in almost $95 billion.
John Conradi of The Campaign for Sustainable Rx Pricing was on The Spark Thursday, discussing ways to reduce the cost of prescription medications.
Conradi, when asked about pharmaceutical companies’ exclusivity on new innovations, said this.
“The issue comes in when companies are extending those monopolies long past that agreed upon reasonable period of exclusivity, then they’re distorting the market. There’s no competitors in the space to force them to innovate, compete, or provide value to the consumer. The consumer is locked into needing the product in order to stay healthy or even survive. And there’s no market forces at play to help bring down prices and make the system more sustainable. It’s also important to keep in mind that US taxpayers heavily subsidize the actual innovation of new products of roughly 200 drugs that were approved in the 2010s by the FDA to come to market. NIH and taxpayers had at least partially funded research into every single one of those drugs.”
Conradi continued, by describing how pharmaceutical companies can be held accountable.
“There’s bipartisan legislation before Congress right now that has won unanimous support from a key Senate panel. Both Republicans and Democrats unanimously on this panel voted in support of this legislation that would help crack down on tactics like product hopping, which is one of the technical terms for one of the ways that Big Pharma games the patent system. There are not many topics that garner unanimous support from Republicans and Democrats in Washington these days. And so, this is a bill that should absolutely be brought to the floor or included in some larger package in advance. It’s the Affordable Prescription for Patients Act, introduced by (R) Senator Cornyn of Texas and (D) Senator Blumenthal of Connecticut.”
Conradi had a positive outlook in this response to this strategy, stating that it “would have a meaningful, positive impact in terms of curtailing some of the worst abuses from the pharmaceutical industry and reintroduce market forces and competition to help drive down prices for consumers.”
