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Sunday, March 6th, 2016

How an army of DC Pharma lobbyists have locked in one of the biggest ripoff schemes in America

Author:     Martha Rosenberg
Source:     The Raw Story/Alternet
Publication Date:     05 Mar 2016 at 22:05 ET
Link: How an army of DC Pharma lobbyists have locked in one of the biggest ripoff schemes in America
Stephan:   From this report: "According to New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, the drug industry spent $272,000 in campaign donations per member of Congress last year. He reports that there are more drug company lobbyists than members of Congress." What more need to be said. Our government is completely corrupted and, as a result, this is why Americans pay many multiples more for the same prescriptions than any other nation on Earth.
Credit: jedmorey.com

Credit: jedmorey.com

After an 18-month investigation into the high cost of Gilead’s hepatitis C drug Sovaldi—initially listed at $84,000 for a course of treatment or $1,000 per pill—the Senate Finance Committee said the prices did not reflect the cost of research and development and that Gilead cared about “revenue” not “affordability and accessibility.” That sounds like an understatement. Sovaldi and the related pill Harvoni cost Medicare and Medicaid more than $5 billion in 2014, charged senators.

But Gilead is far from the only drug company camping out on our tax dollars. In the 2000s, atypical antipsychotics were widely prescribed to children with behavior problems enrolled in Medicaid programs provoking lawsuits from states as their budgets were sacked.

In 2008, the Texas attorney general’s office charged Risperdal maker Janssen (Johnson & Johnson’s psychiatric drug unit) with defrauding the state of millions “with [its] sophisticated and fraudulent marketing scheme,” to “secure a spot for the drug, Risperdal, on the state’s Medicaid preferred drug list and on controversial medical protocols that determine which drugs are given to […]

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1 Comment

  1. David Bean on Sunday, March 6, 2016 at 12:20 pm

    Sweet/bitter irony of this note that each congressman gets a quarter million dollars from big pharma as Nancy Regean who famously said: “Just Say No, to drugs” goes down.

    but enough of somber irony, … back the the news: the Hulk Hogan rematch with Gawker, as the reality stars come to the fore of our sick media to avert attention for the Donald’s ‘hands’.