Drugmakers’ billion-dollar lobbying campaigns to demonize negotiators in both the private sector and the government make one thing very clear: drugmakers simply want a blank check to continue overcharging Americans. These lavishly funded campaigns are intended to divert attention from drugmakers’ relentless abuse of the patent system to prevent competition and keep their prices as high as possible in the U.S.
Bipartisan reforms are needed to restore competition and move toward drug prices that are based on clinical value rather than drugmakers’ lobbying and marketing.
Drugmakers set exorbitantly high prices here in the U.S. – we work to lower them. AHIP and our members will continue to prioritize affordability for American consumers and employers and sustainability for the U.S. health care system.
Here are the facts on how drugmakers are driving the high cost of prescription medications:
- Research has found that the median annual price among new drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2023 reached $300,000, 35% higher than the previous year.
- A 2023 analysis found that “anti-competitive patent abuse tactics used by big pharmaceutical companies cost U.S. consumers an additional $40.7 billion in prescription drug expenses in one year alone.”
- More than 22 cents of every dollar spent on health insurance premiums goes to pay for prescription drugs – more than any other individual category.
- In the first two weeks of 2024, drug manufacturers “raised list prices on 775 brand-name drugs … by a median of 4.5 percent,” outpacing “the rate of inflation, which ticked up to 3.4 percent in December,” according to research from The Wall Street Journal and 46brooklyn Research.
- Over the 2009–2018 period, the average price of a prescription for a brand-name drug more than doubled in the Medicare Part D program and increased by 50% in Medicaid.
- A recent study found the top 10 brand name drugs in terms of “U.S. net sales revenue in 2021” had a total of 1,429 patents or pending patents.
- The largest drugmakers in the United States spend just 22 cents out of every dollar on R&D, and a study from JAMA Network found “no relationship” between the price brand name drug makers set and the amount those companies invest in R&D.
- Nearly 60% of voters name pharmaceutical companies as most responsible for rising prescription drug prices.