Reject Big Pharma’s Self-Serving Money Grab

Big Pharma sets drug prices, increases drug prices, blocks competition through tactics like patent abuse to keep drug prices high — and their direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising pushes sales of their high-priced top-selling products.

Now, Big Pharma is trying to pull off a huge money grab, asking Congress to intervene in the private health care marketplace to increase drug companies’ pricing power. Their plan would boost Big Pharma’s profits, and hike health care costs for everyone else, by undermining pay-for-performance incentives that help pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) negotiate against drug companies to deliver savings for health plan sponsors and patients — American employers and families.

Pharma-backed proposals targeting the private health care market all share the same things in common, they would:

Big Pharma’s policies targeting rebates and pay-for-performance were analyzed by the former chief economist for the U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means, who found they would increase health care premiums by more than $26 billion annually in the commercial health insurance market and hike drug company profits by nearly $22 billion.

PBMs are the only real check on drug companies’ otherwise limitless pricing power which is why health plan sponsors like labor unions and employers voluntarily choose to hire them. PBMs leverage scale and resources to negotiate with drug companies to drive down prescription drug costs, saving an average of $1,040 per person per year.

Big Pharma’s self-serving agenda directly targets that savings and would increase health care costs for employers, unions, patients and families while giving big drug companies a massive profit windfall. 

Congress must focus on lowering drug prices by encouraging greater competition and cracking down on Big Pharma’s patent abuse and DTC advertising, not policies that intrude into the commercial market. Reject Big Pharma’s self-serving money grab.

The Truth About Big Pharma’s DTC Tactics

“Some DTC ads may … present incomplete or biased information[,] spur people to ask for medications they don’t need[, and] promote medications before long-term safety is known. In one case, a new pain relief drug was pulled from the market due to an unexpected rise in heart attacks and strokes – but not before millions of people saw the ad and began taking it.”

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