CSRXP APPLAUDS U.S. SENATE PASSAGE OF BIPARTISAN, MARKET-BASED SOLUTION TO CRACK DOWN ON BIG PHARMA’S PATENT THICKETS

Jul 11, 2024

Legislation Would Hold Big Pharma Accountable for Anti-Competitive Tactics That Extends Monopolies and Keeps Drug Prices High, Disconnected from True Innovation

Washington, D.C. – The Campaign for Sustainable Rx Pricing (CSRxP) released a statement Wednesday on the U.S. Senate passage of a provision of The Affordable Prescriptions for Patients Act, also known as Cornyn-Blumenthal, that would crack down on patent thickets.

“CSRxP applauds Senator Cornyn (R-TX), Senator Blumenthal (D-CT), and Members of the Senate for working across party lines to advance this market-based solution to crack down on Big Pharma’s patent thickets that extend monopolies and keep drug prices high,” said CSRxP executive director Lauren Aronson. “We encourage lawmakers in both chambers to continue working in a spirit of bipartisan collaboration to ensure this solution is passed into law and to build on the momentum for action with additional market-based solutions to lower drug prices for patients by holding Big Pharma accountable.”

CSRxP has been a longstanding supporter of Cornyn-Blumenthal, and additional bipartisan, market-based solutions to hold Big Pharma accountable for abuse of the patent system that blocks competition from more affordable alternatives and imposes billions of dollars in higher drug costs on patients and the U.S. Health care system each year.

A January 2023 report from Matrix Global Advisors, “Patent Thickets and Lost Drug Savings,” quantified the one-year cost of lost savings on five brand name drugs around which Big Pharma has built especially egregious patent thickets. The five drugs were AbbVie’s autoimmune drug Humira and oncology drug Imbruvica, Regeneron’s ophthalmology drug Eylea, Amgen’s autoimmune drug Enbrel, and Bristol Myers Squibb’s oncology drug Opdivo.

The report assesses what the savings would be for these five drugs if “a steady state of competition [existed] where generics and biosimilars have achieved price discounts and uptake currently observed in the market.” Based on these calculations, the estimated one-year cost of patent thickets on each of these brand name drugs was:

$7.6 billion for Humira
$3.1 billion for Imbruvica
$2.5 billion for Eylea
$1.9 billion for Enbrel
$1.8 billion for Opdivo

This amounts to a total of more than $16 billion in additional drug spending each year, for just these five brand name drugs.