November 7, 2025
TOPLINE
Several pharmaceutical giants including GSK, Merck, Bristol Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, Gilead, AbbVie, Amgen and Pfizer recently reported earnings for the third quarter, with all eight companies beating Wall Street analysts’ expectations after increasing prices on more than 100 drugs combined just this year alone.
Several of the companies also raised their earnings forecast for the year, following the strong quarterly results — the latest indication that Big Pharma is feeling bullish about maintaining its egregious pricing and anti-competitive practices that fuel blockbuster profits, despite rising bipartisan scrutiny. As AbbVie’s CEO said on their earnings call this week: “We’ve beaten and raised in every quarter in 2025.”
Read more on the recent earnings HERE and HERE.
And in case you missed it, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz last week announced reforms to accelerate biosimilar approvals — an important step toward fostering greater competition from more affordable alternatives to Big Pharma’s high-priced brand name biologics and lowering prescription drug prices.
The announcements included commitments to update FDA guidance to eliminate comparative efficacy study requirements and streamline biosimilar approvals — a move that could significantly reduce barriers to fostering greater competition from more affordable alternatives to high-priced biologic drugs. The FDA also signaled support for automatically designating all biosimilars as interchangeable with their reference products and taking steps to increase domestic biosimilar manufacturing.
Read more on highlights from the announcement HERE.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“The fastest area of growth of healthcare spending in the United States, and the fastest area of drug price inflation, is an expensive new class of medications called biologics… There is a generic version we call a biosimilar, but the problem is that there’s been a lot of red tape and a lot of difficulty for biosimilar manufacturers to bring these medications to market.”
Marty Makary, U.S. Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration
DATA POINTS YOU SHOULD KNOW
Nine in 10 Americans
90 percent of Americans support policy solutions that lead to faster access to generic drugs, according to a recently released survey from The Initiative for Medicines, Access and Knowledge (I-MAK).
TWEETS OF THE WEEK
@HHSGov: “Last week, new guidance was announced to make it faster and less costly to develop biosimilars—safe, effective, lower-cost alternatives to expensive biologic drugs. This win will lower prescription drug costs for millions of Americans.”
@DrMakaryFDA: “Generics have saved Americans trillions of dollars, in part because their streamlined development process facilitates competition. Now, we’re bringing the same level of competition to expensive biologic drugs.”
ROAD TO RECOVERY
The Washington Examiner: Dr. Oz And FDA Chief Say Biosimilar Drug Reform Will Lower Prices
Trump administration officials pledged Monday that major reforms for biosimilar drug approvals will expand access and lower prices for some of the most expensive drugs on the market. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz outlined further details about the Trump administration’s plan to slash regulations on biosimilar drug development in an op-ed on Monday.
I-MAK: Understanding Americans’ Top Concerns on Drug Pricing: Corporate Greed
The Initiative for Medicines, Access and Knowledge (I-MAK) commissioned a survey of 726 American adults to assess public attitudes toward prescription drug pricing and potential reforms. Conducted by Franklin & Marshall College’s Center for Opinion Research in June 2025, this baseline survey reveals significant bipartisan consensus on the need for prescription drug reform, with particularly strong support for patent system changes.
PHARMA’S POOR PROGNOSIS
STAT News: Novo Nordisk Spent Millions On Weight Loss Searches That Took People To Its Ozempic Website, Analysis Found
Over a recent two-year period, Novo Nordisk spent an estimated $7.5 million on more than 15,000 paid keywords related to weight loss searches and generated more than 2.4 million visits to Ozempic.com, even though the medicine is not approved to combat obesity, a new analysis found. Notably, more than 3,500 keywords contained no mention of the medicine, which is approved to treat diabetes, including misspellings of the drug name. Meanwhile, nearly $500,000 was spent by the company on weight loss-related terms, such as “Ozempic for weight loss” and “Ozempic weight loss,” according to the analysis published in JAMA.
STAT News: Opinion: A $20 Over-The-Counter Drug In Europe Requires A Prescription And $800 In The U.S.
A month’s supply of Miebo, Bausch & Lomb’s prescription dry eye drug, costs $800 or more in the U.S. before insurance. But the same drug — sold as EvoTears — has been available over-the-counter (OTC) in Europe since 2015 for about $20. I ordered it online from an overseas pharmacy for $32 including shipping, and it was delivered in a week. This is, of course, both shocking and unsurprising. A 2021 RAND study found U.S. prescription drug prices are, on average, more than 2.5 times higher than in 32 other developed nations. Miebo exemplifies how some pharmaceutical companies exploit regulatory loopholes and patent protections, prioritizing profits over patients, eroding trust in health care.
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