Drug companies rigging the market

Conservatives & libertarians will applaud the fact that drug companies are not prevented from doing this by government regulations.

https://www.facebook.com/RBReich/posts/992248654121064

from Robert Reich's Facebook
April 28,2015

According to yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, pharmaceutical companies are buying drugs they see as undervalued and then...

Posted by Robert Reich on Tuesday, April 28, 2015

According to yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, pharmaceutical companies are buying drugs they see as undervalued and then raising their prices dramatically – thereby contributing to the dramatic increase in branded-drug prices. As one executive explains, “our duty is to our shareholders.”

But the real scandal isn’t that pharmaceutical companies raising drug prices to whatever the market will bear. All corporations are doing that. It’s that Big Pharma is rigging the market in at least 8 ways:

1. Big Pharma has got a law barring our government from using its considerable bargaining power to negotiate lower drug prices.

2. It’s also got a law allowing pharmaceutical companies to patent the processes they use to manufacture vaccines and other products from nature.

3. It’s pushed the U.S. Patent Office to renew drug patents on the basis of small and insignificant changes in the original drugs that technically make them “new” and therefore patentable, and has prevented pharmacies from substituting generic versions of brand-name drugs that become different in even the most minor of ways.

4. Due to Big Pharma, America is one of few advanced nations that allow direct advertising of prescription drugs. Pharmaceutical companies aggressively market their brands long after the patents have expired so patients ask doctors to prescribe them.

6. Big Pharma has made it illegal for Americans to obtain from licensed pharmacies abroad cheaper versions of the same drugs sold in the United States, either branded or generic.

7. It's ensured that the law allows pharmaceutical companies in the U.S. to pay doctors for prescribing their drugs.

8. It’s likewise made sure drug companies are allowed to pay the makers of generic drugs to delay their cheaper versions. Such “pay-for-delay” agreements generate huge profits for both the original manufacturers as well as the generics.

Here again, the real choice isn’t between the “market” and “government.” Big Pharma is using its clout to rig the market against the rest of us.