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October, 2016

TAKING ON THE GREED OF THE PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY

Virtually every single day, my office hears from constituents in Vermont and people all over this country who are sick and tired of being ripped off by the pharmaceutical industry—an industry that charges Americans, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs.




Today, there are Americans who are struggling with cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and other life-threatening illnesses who are either unable to afford the medicine they need to stay alive or are forced to go deeply into debt to buy those drugs. Each and every year, senior citizens throughout the country cut their pills in half to stretch one month’s prescription into two. That is not what should be taking place in a civilized democracy.

Tragically, in our country, one out of five patients who get a prescription from their doctor is unable to fill that prescription. How insane is that? People walk into a doctor’s office because they are sick, but because of the greed of the pharmaceutical industry, they are unable to afford the medicine they desperately need. How many of those patients die each year nobody knows, but I would be very surprised if we’re not talking about thousands of Americans. Furthermore, as prescription drug prices soar, the overall cost of health insurance increases in our country— affecting every American.




The reason we pay two times, five times, ten times more for medicine than other countries do is pretty simple. No other country on earth allows drug companies to charge any price they want for any reason. Somebody in Burlington, Vermont, can walk into a pharmacy and find that the price they pay for the medicine they’ve been using for years has doubled or tripled. And in the United States, that is perfectly legal. Drug companies can and do raise prices, sometimes in outrageous ways, simply because they can, because the market will bear it.




The former CEO of Gilead, John Martin, became a billionaire because his drug company charged $i,ooo a pill for Sovaldi, a hepatitis C drug that costs a mere $i to manufacture and can be bought in India for just $4




Meanwhile, with Americans dying because they cannot afford the medications they need, the profits of the pharmaceutical industry soar. In 2015, five of the biggest drug companies made a total of over S50 billion in profits, while the top ten pharmaceutical industry CEOs made $327 million in total compensation.




Why do we pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs when millions of Americans cannot afford the medicine they desperately need? Why can drug companies raise their prices at any time, for any reason? Why, year after year, is the pharmaceutical industry one of the most profitable sectors in the United States? Why do CEOs of drug companies receive huge compensation packages?




The answer to these questions is simple. The pharmaceutical industry is one of the wealthiest and most powerful political forces in this country. Over the past twenty years, the industry has spent more than $4 billion on lobbying and campaign contributions to get Congress and state legislatures to do its bidding. They have more than 1,200 lobbyists in Washington, DC, alone, including many former political leaders. They own the Republican Party and have significant influence over the Democratic Party as well.




Here is a recent example of the power of the pharmaceutical industry and the unlimited amounts of money they have to protect their interests. In 2016, a group of consumer activists, led by the National Nurses United union, secured enough signatures to put an initiative on the California ballot, with the goal of lowering drug prices.




Specifically, this proposal would require California to pay no more than the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) does for prescription drugs. Because the VA is the only federal agency that is required by law to negotiate with the drug companies, it pays lower prices for prescription drugs than any other agency in America. In fact, the VA pays about 24 percent less for drugs than most government agencies and about 40 percent less than Medicare Part D.