Pharma Lobby Furious Over Wildly Popular Effort to Curb Drug Prices

Politics@beehaw.org – 266 points – 10 months ago

The pharmaceutical lobby strongly opposed the Biden administration's plan to directly negotiate drug prices for 10 medications with Medicare. PhRMA argued this will hurt innovation, but advocates note that drug companies make 76% more than needed for R&D. Eliquis, which costs Medicare over $16 billion, will be subject to negotiations. The policy was enabled by the Inflation Reduction Act, which PhRMA spent millions lobbying against. PhRMA sued over the negotiations, but the DOJ moved to dismiss the case. Advocates believe this defeat of Big Pharma will not be the last as negotiations may expand to over 100 drugs in the future, greatly helping seniors and people with disabilities access affordable medications.

Cry me a river.

Better yet, Big Pharma, bleed me a river, full of the money you've gouged from the sick and the dying, of insulin profits and unpaid wages. Bleed until you fucking die, you inhuman parasites.

Amazed at how the same people who defend a business model that depends on price inelasticities to extract the last dime for lifesaving meds somehow react with horror at the idea that the biggest negotiator of pharmaceutical prices in the U.S. has the gall to negotiate lower prices. The government isn’t ‘dictating’ anything. It is using its market power to drive the price down.

That is the vaunted free market at work. Anything else is just corporate socialism.

corporate socialism is an oxymoron. The key to socialism is the ownership of the means of production by the workers.

What you refer to is just classical oligarchy / kleptocracy

That was a dig directed at those that shout “socialism “ at things that are clearly not socialism (like negotiating prescription drug prices), but you are of course correct. Thank you for correcting my rhetorical excess, internet friend!

Big Pharma: we need to charge extortion rates to pay for R&D

Public: oh, cool, so you are using that money to pay the research, and not taking half of it in management bonus?

Big Pharma: ...

Public: You are not pocketing half of it right, right?

Big Pharma: COMMUNISTS!!!! The CEO needs the 3rd yacht otherwise he'll refuse to sign on the research, do you want that?

Sounds like a CEO needs to stop ordering coffee and eating avocado toast.

Of course they’re not pocketing half of it. They’re pocketing the 75%

A win is a win, so the Americans should take it were they can but this will just push costs elsewhere. I image they'll just recoup the profit on the next 10 most popular drugs were they can gouge. We really need to start talking about comprehensive healthcare reform, a revolution so to speak, that stops this stupid patchwork and actually give us universal healthcare.

It opens a crack to do it again. And again and again. If it didn't hurt them they wouldn't fight it so hard. But I do agree we should be trying for something more comprehensive. That said, I don't think the country is currently capable of doing something like that. We're too broken.

I I'm off the firm belief life saving medicine shouldn't cost the consumer anything. The government should be in charge and negotiate pricing with the businesses. But they're rather bleed us dry.

I image they’ll just recoup the profit on the next 10 most popular drugs were they can gouge.

If they could gouge them, they probably would be doing so already.

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tHiS wIlL hUrT iNnOvAtIoN

so tired of seeing this fucking response from parasite CEOs and their wannabe bootlickers

Maybe if they didn't spend so much money on those horrible TV ads they'd have enough for R&D. And evergreening isn't innovation anyways, so idk what they're on about.