Prescription Drug Costs
I want drug companies to make money. I need them to make money, or I don’t have any ammo, but there has to be a balance, a middle ground - Frank Esper
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The high cost of prescription drugs: causes and solutions
The high cost of prescription drugs threatens healthcare budgets, and limits funding available for other areas in which public investment is needed. In countries without universal healthcare, the high cost of prescription drugs poses an additional threat: unaffordable out-of-pocket costs for individual patients. Approximately 25% of Americans find it difficult to afford prescription drugs due to high out-of-pocket costs3. Drug companies cite high drug prices as being important for sustaining innovation. But the ability to charge high prices for every new drug possibly slows the pace of innovation. It is less risky to develop drugs that represent minor modifications of existing drugs (“me-too”…
Featured
Trump Promised the ‘World’s Lowest’ Drug Prices. We Checked the Numbers.
The TrumpRx website shows the prices that the administration negotiated for a few dozen of the several thousand prescription medications in the United States. The list includes almost none of the most widely used drugs, like statins, or ultraexpensive drugs like cancer therapies. Some well-known drugs on the list are Xeljanz, for autoimmune conditions, and Farxiga, for diabetes and heart and kidney problems. Both are cheaper in Germany, a rare example of a country that makes its negotiated drug prices public.
Navigating the Prescription Drug Cost Conundrum
Prescription drug costs in the U.S. have climbed to levels that could make your wallet consider early retirement. It’s a shared frustration, patients feel the pinch at the pharmacy counter, and doctors feel it when trying to help you stick to treatments without breaking the bank.
Articles of Interest
How do prescription drug costs in the United States compare to other countries?
More than three in four adults in the United States think the costs of prescription drugs are unaffordable and nearly one in three adults say they haven’t taken their medications as prescribed due to costs. In 2019, the U.S. spent more than $1,000 per person on prescribed medicines, an amount higher than any peer nation.
A New Strategy to Undermine Big Pharma’s Price Gouging Actually Worked
A little-known disease called Chagas is much more prevalent than Zika. Here’s how advocates fought an uphill battle, and won.
Americans Pay More For Drugs Than Anyone In The World
U.S. prices for the world's 20 top-selling medicines are, on average, three times higher than in Britain, according to an analysis carried out for Reuters. The finding underscores a transatlantic gulf between the price of treatments for a range of diseases and follows demands for lower drug costs in America from industry critics such as Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
Big Pharma, Little Movies
Big Pharma – oh, how we love to hate you. The corporate behemoth that is the pharmaceutical industry has morphed into a gargantuan force in American politics and business yielding immense power.
Everyone Wants to Reduce Drug Prices. So Why Can’t We Do It?
An angry public overwhelmingly wants change in an easily vilified industry. The pharmaceutical industry’s recent publicity nightmare included 1,000 percent price increases and a smirking chief executive who said, “I liken myself to the robber barons.” Even powerful members of Congress from both parties have said that drug prices are too high.
High Drug Prices Are Killing Americans
Americans pay the highest prices for prescription drugs in the world -- by far. Drug costs increased 12.6 percent last year, more than double the rise in overall medical costs. (Inflation in this country was 0.8 percent that year.) Even before that, we spent nearly 40 percent more per person on prescriptions in 2013 than they did in Canada, the next most expensive industrialized country. Prescription drugs cost nearly five times more per person in this country than they did in Denmark that year.
Holding Drug Companies Accountable for Drug Prices
What's the least controversial statement anyone could make about health care costs in the United States? Drug prices are out of control. No one really disputes it, and the real question is, Do we have the political will to do anything about it?
How Big Pharma Drug Pricing Costs Us Our Health
AIDS activism group ACT UP is on the front lines again—this time in a global fight for universal access to 'miracle' hep C, HIV, and cancer medications. So what's stopping it?
How the U.S. Pays 3 Times More for Drugs
In Britain the world's 20 top-selling medicines are three times cheaper than in the U.S.
Inside the Battle Over High Prescription Drug Costs in the U.S.
In one corner: U.S. consumers fed up with high drug prices. In the other: pharmaceutical companies arguing that price controls stifle innovation. ‘The Other Drug War,’ a 2003 documentary tracing the history of the battle over prescription drug affordability, is newly available on FRONTLINE’s YouTube channel.
Medicare’s first-ever drug price negotiations, briefly explained
The 10 drugs on the list are a diverse set. Some are taken by millions of people with price tags in the low thousands of dollars annually. Others are priced at more than six figures per year and taken by a much smaller number of patients. Together, the list represents the multifaceted ways that high drug prices put pressure on both patients and insurers and raise the risk that people will not have access to medicines that they need.
Mylan's Outrageous EpiPen Price Hikes: How Many Children Will Suffer?
It was impossible to look online last week without noticing one story after another about the egregious price increases for the EpiPen and, further, the ensuing demand for investigations by Congress and the Federal Trade Commission from a variety of public figures, including Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, whose child has severe allergies.
Public Opinion on Prescription Drugs and Their Prices
Large majorities across party lines want the government to do more to regulate drug prices, and many support a range of policies. At least two-thirds of Democrats, independents, and Republicans say there is not enough regulation of prescription drug prices. Most support a range of policies to address costs, such as two provisions of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA): allowing Medicare to negotiate prices and limiting how much drug companies can increase the price of drugs based on annual inflation rates.
Soaring insulin prices are a case in point: A 'free market' in healthcare is doomed
With virtually no limits on what can be charged for medicine, drug companies have imposed a series of price increases with no seeming justification other than to enrich executives and shareholders at the expense of patients.
The Cancer Patient Taking On High Drug Prices
It takes $440,000 of medications a year to keep David Mitchell alive. Now he’s founded a nonprofit to make drugs more affordable.
The High Cost of Price Controls on Eliquis and Other Drugs
By stifling innovation, the Inflation Reduction Act will harm patients far more than it helps them.
The Solution to Drug Prices
Almost all developed countries — including those run by very conservative governments — have an effective solution for drug prices, which is why these countries often pay less than half of what people in the United States pay for drugs. For instance, Australia’s more than 60-year-old Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme has been the single purchaser of drugs for the country, making drugs available at fixed prices that are now listed online.
The true story of America’s sky-high prescription drug prices
The United States is exceptional in that it does not regulate or negotiate the prices of new prescription drugs when they come onto market. Other countries will task a government agency to meet with pharmaceutical companies and haggle over an appropriate price.
The way to fix outrageous drug pricing in the US...
While insults of all kinds have been thrown at “Pharma Bro,” he is not the real villain but rather someone trying to do his job, which is to make a profit. The villain is the system.
Trump signs executive order setting 30-day deadline for drugmakers to lower prescription drug costs
The order calls on the health department, led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to broker new price tags for drugs over the next month. If deals are not reached, Kennedy will be tasked with developing a new rule that ties the price the U.S. pays for medications to lower prices paid by other countries.
U.S. Announces First Drugs Picked for Medicare Price Negotiations
The price negotiation program, established by Democrats as part of the Inflation Reduction Act, is projected to save the government tens of billions of dollars in the coming years.
Resources
3 ways America is trying to get its drug-price problem under control
The US has a problem: the cost of pharmaceuticals is rising too fast. It grabs attention in extreme cases, like when the the price of a 62-year-old drug was hiked from $13.50 to $750 per pill overnight, or a new cure for hepatitis C debuted with a list price of about $1,000 a pill.
Patients for Affordable Drugs
The prescription drug pricing system in the U.S. is rigged against patients. We are fighting to change that. Prescription drug prices are out of control. The drug corporations have literally rigged the system to have monopoly pricing power—spending billions to get the laws and regulations that benefit them. They’ve spent $2 billion on lobbying in Washington since 2003.
