“In sum, we find no credible evidence that the real research costs to major companies themselves for cancer research are higher than producing other drugs,” their AARP analysis said. “So why are cancer drug prices higher? We think pharmaceutical companies are price-gouging. Even worse, companies raise the prices on some of their older drugs by 20 to 25 percent a year. In the past decade, they have almost doubled their prices for cancer drugs.”
The physicians said this strategy of “market spiral pricing” was an outrageous consumer rip-off. “No other advanced country allows companies to raise prices on older drugs. No other industry raises prices on last year’s cars or cellphones.”
“Congress should hold hearings on the spiraling prices for speciality drugs,” they said, echoing Mayo’s call for federal action. “And it should eliminate the rule that prohibits Medicare from negotiating discount drug prices… These changes could substantively cut the nation’s health care costs and provide incentives for companies to focus on developing clinically better drugs than slightly better drugs at sky-high prices.”
But right now, the pharmaceutical industry is lobbying Congress to pass a bill that would slow the distribution of generic drugs—adding billions to annual taxpayer costs for Medicare and Medicaid, progressive economists say—by exempting drug makers from a new patent review board that was intended to keep companies from making bogus claims about their patents.
In other words, while some if the nation's leading cancer doctors are trying to draw attention to what they say is an unnecessary medical crisis causing financial ruin for many American households, the pharmaceutical industry ispressuring Congress to give greater profit-making abilities.
(Sign the Mayo Clinic's change.org petition calling on Congress to act).
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