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!
That can’t be. People keep telling me how Democrats in general and especially Biden are beholden to corporate interests. And they keep telling me this more often the closer an election is.
Biden is an expert at politicking. He hasn’t done anything to slow down the war machine. I understand providing supplies to Ukraine for foreign allies in Eastern Europe. But we do a lot of fuck shit at the small scale.
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.
- taylus ( @taylus@lemmy.ml ) 22•2 years ago
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.
- argv_minus_one ( @argv_minus_one@beehaw.org ) 20•2 years ago
PhRMA argued this will hurt innovation
Hmph. That would require there to be innovation to hurt.
Even if there were, so what? Let innovation be hurt. People are dying as it is.
Seriously. Why should we care about innovation if it only produces solutions for the wealthy?
They’re innovating how to make the smallest, least significant tweaks to their chemical formulas to extend patents another 20 years.
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The pharmaceutical lobby can go fuck themselves.
They already made a pill that will help them do that
Just for purely academic interest, where can one find this pill?
PhRMA? So there is an actual Big Pharma?
Just wondering, but why would Big Pharma need to sue over negotiations? Are they compromising or being told what the prices will be from now on?