Stephan: The American pharmaceutical industry is a study in greed. In the United States we have the worst drug price situation on earth. The entire operation is a racket. The government through grants to researchers pays for much of the development of drugs, which are then patented by drig corporations, and those corporations then profit from that research and set the prices Americans have to pay for those drugs. Why, any intelligent person, should ask do the same drugs for which Americans pay so much cost just a small fraction of that price in the rest of the world? The answer, of course, is that the government of the United States is notably corrupt, and bribery of public officials was legalized by Citizens United. As a result the pharmaceutical corporations routinely rent Congress men and women, particularly white Republican men, to make sure the price gouging they do remains legal and unregulated.
Demonstrators protest pharmaceutical companies’ lobbying during a rally outside Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America headquarters in Washington, D.C. on September 21, 2021. Credit: Saul Loeb/AFP / Getty
Major pharmaceutical companies in the U.S. hiked the prices of nearly 870 prescription medications during the first month of the new year as lock-step Republicans and right-wing Democrats—flush with cash from drugmakers—continue to block legislation aimed at reining in the industry.
Through January 20 of this year, according to an analysis released Sunday by Rx Savings Solutions, drugmakers raised the costs of 866 of their products in the U.S. by an average of 6.6%.
“Outrageously high prescription drug prices are now even higher.”
“Over the same period last year, drugmakers raised prices by an average of 4.5% on 893 drugs,” observed the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the new study.
“There were some large price increases. AmerisourceBergen Corp.’s Blue Point Laboratories, a seller of generic drugs, more than doubled the price of the cancer chemotherapy drug cisplatin to $30,” the Journal noted. Exelan Pharmaceuticals Inc. raised the price of its […]
