Big Pharma: Lower The List Price

Big Pharma sets the price of the prescription drugs — and the price is the problem when it comes to Americans facing difficulty affording their prescription drugs.

Big drug companies determine the price, decide when to increase the price, block competition to keep the price high and increase sales by spending billions of dollars each year advertising high-priced products to consumers.

Big Pharma is ripping off Americans. Big Pharma increases drug prices year in and year out, including hiking prices on more than 250 brand name drugs in the first week of 2025, with a median increase higher than the rate of inflation — and increasing prices more than 1,300 times in 2024.

A recent analysis found that Big Pharma’s price increases on five top-selling drugs cost U.S. patients and the health care system $815 million in 2023, despite a lack of innovation to justify those price increases.

Another report from AARP found that Big Pharma “consistently” hiked prices above inflation on 943 top-selling drugs in all but one year between 2006 and 2020.

Big Pharma’s anti-competitive practices, like patent abuse, cost U.S. consumers an additional $40.07 billion on drug spending in just one year.

One of Big Pharma’s anti-competitive tactics, the practice of filing dozens or even hundreds of patents on just one drug to create a patent thicket, will cost patients an estimated $167 billion for just three of the top ten drugs that have no competition in the market.

Americans are paying the highest prices in the world when it comes to prescriptions.

Americans spend more on the top 20 most-prescribed medications than the rest of the world combined, almost double what the rest of the world spends.

The average U.S. price on prescriptions is nearly three times (2.78) those seen in 33 other countries.

For brand name drugs, U.S. consumers are seeing prices 4.22 times higher than those in other nations.

Big Pharma’s direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising encourages Americans to take expensive blockbuster drugs they may not even need.

Drug companies spend roughly $6 billion each year on DTC ads. From 2016 to 2018, they spent $17.8 billion on DTC ads.

Ten of the largest drug companies spent $36 billion — or 37 percent — more on sales expenses and marketing than on research and development.

Simply put: PBMs support lower drug prices.

In fact, PBMs have repeatedly called on drug companies to lower list prices on their products to benefit consumers, including on specific drug classes, like high-priced GLP-1 treatments for weight loss and diabetes.

PBMs have committed to expanding and continuing access to drugs, but the ball is in Big Pharma’s court to lower prices.

Big Pharma: Lower The List Price

Simply put: PBMs support lower drug prices.

When Will Drug Companies Answer The Call To Lower Egregious Drug Prices? Tell Big Pharma: Lower The List Price.

$148 billion

$1000 +

$275 million

Affordability

Savings

Choice

When Will Drug Companies Answer The Call To Lower Egregious Drug Prices?
Tell Big Pharma: Lower The List Price.