July 25, 2025
TOPLINE
In case you missed it, Johnson & Johnson reported earnings for the second quarter of the year that beat Wall Street analysts’ expectations after already hiking prescription drug prices 30 times just so far this year. Johnson & Johnson has consistently beat Wall Street analysts’ revenue expectations for years, including in 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024 — while repeatedly hiking prices on brand name products and deploying anti-competitive tactics to undermine competition from more affordable alternatives.
Johnson & Johnson has hiked prices on 30 prescription drugs in 2025, including a 5.5 percent increase on multiple myeloma drug Darzalex and a 4.7 percent increase on psoriasis drug Stelara. Read more on Johnson & Johnson’s earnings, fueled by price hikes and anti-competitive tactics HERE.
QUOTES OF THE WEEK
“You know the ads with the catchy jingle and flashy images of patients rock climbing, golfing, dancing, [or] parading? Big Pharma spends more than $6 billion a year to flood the airwaves with ads for the latest wonder-drug. Why? Why would they spend this much money to advertise [these drugs]? They [Big Pharma] spend such astronomical sums to promote their drugs because it increases their profit margins.”
- U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL)
DATA POINTS YOU SHOULD KNOW
$50 Billion
The amount drug spending grew in 2024, to a total of $487 billion, according to a report from HIT Consultant.
TWEETS OF THE WEEK
@ChuckGrassley: “2day Sen Durbin & I offered our Rx Price Transparency 4 Consumers Act on Senate floor It was blocked but will keep fighting 2 hold Big Pharma accountable & require price disclosure in drug ads Its COMMON SENSE!”
@SenatorDurbin: “NEWS: Sen. Grassley and I will try to pass our bill today to crack down on drug ads. Big
Pharma floods TV with deceptive Rx ads, but always keeps price secret. Our bill makes Pharma tell the price in the commercial. President Trump and Sec. Kennedy agree.”
ROAD TO RECOVERY
Inside Health Policy: Patent Reforms Take Center Stage At First FTC-DOJ Drug Pricing Panel
Academics and advocates for affordable drugs pressed for patent reforms to boost the accessibility and affordability of generic drugs and biosimilars at a recent event hosted by the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, touting reforms like prohibiting payments to delay the market entry of lower-cost medications and barring multiple patent filings to extend market exclusivity.
The Office Of U.S. Senator Dick Durbin: Durbin, Grassley Ask For Unanimous Consent To Pass Their Bill To Crack Down On Pharmaceutical Advertisements
Today on the Senate floor, U.S. Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) and U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) asked for unanimous consent (UC) to pass their bipartisan Drug-price Transparency for Consumers (DTC) Act, a bipartisan bill that would require price disclosures on advertisements for prescription drugs in order to empower patients and reduce Americans’ colossal spending on medications. The United States is one of only two industrialized countries in the world that allow drug advertising. Despite prior support for the measure from the Trump Administration, the request was blocked by a Senate Republican.
MM+M: Beyond RFK Jr., Pharma TV Ad Ban Gains Congressional Momentum
[C]ritics often point out that the U.S. and New Zealand are the only two countries that allow DTC pharma advertising. They charge that the practice coaxes patients into asking their doctors for brand-name medications and that the advertising spend would be better utilized as a reinvestment in research and development. Additionally, pharma companies spend billions of dollars on DTC advertising each year, but studies repeatedly show that this exercise delivers billions in prescription drug sales, too.
PHARMA’S POOR PROGNOSIS
STAT News: Study Of GLP-1 Guidelines For Teens Points To Potential For Influence From Drugmakers
American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines that set off a new era in obesity treatment — and a national debate about whether children should be prescribed weight loss drugs — may have been shaped by pharmaceutical industry influence, a new analysis suggests. Over one-third of people who helped develop the 2023 “Clinical Practice Guideline for the Evaluation and Treatment of Children and Adolescents With Obesity” had undisclosed financial ties to obesity drugmakers, a paper published this month in the journal BMJ found.
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