June 27, 2025
TOPLINE
In case you missed it, the Washington Post recently published an editorial titled, “Americans Pay A Lot For Drugs Because They’re Worth It,” which presents Americans with a false choice between pharmaceutical innovation and affordability. The reality is, we can have both innovation and affordability when it comes to pharmaceutical drugs.
Big Pharma routinely asserts research and development (R&D) costs justify out-of-control prescription drug prices and claims solutions to lower prices threaten innovation. These arguments simply don’t hold up to the facts—and are part of a Big Pharma strategy to maintain the status quo where they game the system to block competition and keep drug prices high.
Numerous studies from medical and academic experts, government analysts and nonprofit researchers have confirmed Big Pharma’s egregious pricing practices have no connection to the cost of developing a new medication or improving a drug’s clinical value for patients.
A September 2022 JAMA Network Open analysis found “no association” between manufacturer drug prices and investments in R&D. An October 2022 JAMA Internal Medicine study found oncology treatments are “priced based predominantly on what the market will bear,” not effectiveness for patients. A 2021 report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) found, “When drug companies set the prices of a new drug, they do so to maximize future revenues net of manufacturing and distribution costs. A drug’s sunk R&D costs—that is, the costs already incurred in developing that drug—do not influence its price.”
Policymakers should reject Big Pharma’s false arguments on innovation and advance bipartisan, market-based solutions to hold brand name drug companies accountable, boost competition and lower drug prices for patients.
Read more on bipartisan, market-based solutions to hold Big Pharma accountable HERE.
QUOTES OF THE WEEK
“It’s important for the public to really become more and more in tune with how the [pharma] companies are using the patent system for their own gain and not as it was originally intended to bring out these groundbreaking medical discoveries. Now it’s a system of how much money can I make, it’s become an ATM.”
Tahir Amin, CEO, Initiative for Medicines, Access & Knowledge
DATA POINTS YOU SHOULD KNOW
$28.2 Million
Big Pharma’s estimated direct-to-consumer (DTC) television advertising spend on blockbuster brand name drug Dupixent in May 2025, according to Medical Marketing and Media
TWEETS OF THE WEEK
@IMAKglobal: “We want to expose how the patent system has become a tool to drive the business model and financial gain…It’s a corruption of the patent system” @realtahiramin walks through our new Overpatented, Overpriced report with @LeverNews”
@P4ADNOW: “The harmful ORPHAN Cures Act was excluded from the Senate Finance Committee’s reconciliation text, a new I-MAK report exposed how drug companies abuse the patent system to keep prices high, and a federal judge overruled the administration’s termination of over $1B in NIH research grants. Read more at our Week in Review: https://tinyurl.com/wnncyva4”
ROAD TO RECOVERY
eMarketer: New Regulations On Pharma Advertising Are Under Review By Trump Administration
The Trump administration is mulling new policies to make pharma advertising more difficult, per a Bloomberg report. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has called for a ban on pharma TV advertising, is instead eyeing two policies: One would require drugmakers to disclose more side effects in D2C advertising. The other would eliminate pharma companies’ advertising tax deductions… In April, a bipartisan group of lawmakers proposed eliminating pharma company advertising tax deductions. It could generate more than $1.5 billion in tax revenues, per analysis by Campaign for Sustainable Rx Pricing.
PHARMA’S POOR PROGNOSIS
TechTarget: Extensive Patent Strategies Drive U.S. Drug Price Disparities
Americans are paying up to eight times more for critical anticoagulant and GLP-1 medications than patients in other developed nations, as pharmaceutical giants exploit patent loopholes to block affordable generics, according to a new report. The Initiative for Medicines, Access & Knowledge (I-MAK) 2025 data brief reveals how pharmaceutical companies like Bristol Myers Squibb, Pfizer and Novo Nordisk have strategically extended patent protections for blockbuster drugs like apixaban (branded as Eliquis) and semaglutide (branded as Rybelsus, Ozempic and Wegovy).
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