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The Crisis
By The Numbers
Out-of-Control Drug Prices
820+
The number of Big Pharma price increases on brand name drugs in January 2024, according to data from 46brooklyn Research.
4.7 Percent
The median percentage increase of Big Pharma’s January 2024 price hikes, according to data from 46brooklyn Research, outpacing the 3.1 percent rate of inflation at the time.
All-But-One
Big Pharma’s price hikes outpaced inflation on nearly 1,000 popular medications every year except one between 2006 and 2020, according to a January 2024 analysis by AARP.
48
In December 2023, the Biden-Harris Administration announced that Big Pharma increased prices faster than the rate of inflation on 48 Medicare Part B drugs in the last quarter of 2023.
$ 300000+
The median annual launch price of drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2023, up 35 percent compared to the previous year, according to a February 2024 analysis from Reuters.
Patent Abuse
$ 40 Billion
Big Pharma’s anti-competitive tactics, including patent abuse, cost U.S. consumers over $40 billion in just one year, according to a recent analysis from I-MAK.
$ 16 Billion
Big Pharma’s patent thickets on just five drugs cost U.S. consumers over $16 billion in lost savings, according to a 2023 report from Matrix Global Advisors (MGA).
4x
Brand name drug companies target their most profitable products for reformulation to extend monopolies and prohibit generic competition from entering the market. “Between 1995 and 2010, approval of new formulations was four times more likely among blockbuster drugs,” according to a May 2022 study published in JAMA Health Forum.
300+
Brand name drug companies target their most profitable products for reformulation to extend monopolies and prohibit generic competition from entering the market. “Between 1995 and 2010, approval of new formulations was four times more likely among blockbuster drugs,” according to a May 2022 study published in JAMA Health Forum.
Innovation Rhetoric
Pfizer’s Flip-Flop
In March 2024, while speaking to investors at the TD Cowen Health Care Conference, Pfizer Chief Financial Officer David Denton downplayed solutions passed by Congress in 2022 to hold brand name drug companies accountable and lower drug prices, describing their impact as “modest.” Meanwhile, in 2023, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla hyperbolically claimed the same policies were akin to the government putting “a gun to your head.”
300
In November 2023, PhRMA released a report accidentally demonstrating that the innovation pipeline for serious conditions, like cancer, had actually grown since the passage of legislation Big Pharma claimed would hamper breakthroughs. PhRMA’s report showed there were 300 more cancer medicines in development after the law they opposed was passed, than in December 2020, before the law was passed.
$ 1.2 Billion
In 2022, brand name drug makers’ unjustified price hikes on just eight prescription medications cost the U.S. an additional $1.2 billion, according to a December 2023 analysis from the Institute of Clinical and Economic Review (ICER). The analysis examined price increases that occurred without any new clinical evidence or improvements to justify the increases.
$ 1.8 Billion
Price hikes on AbbVie’s Humira that were not supported by new clinical evidence accounted for an unnecessary increase in U.S. drug spending of more than $1.8 billion from 2017-2018 according to a 2019 analysis from ICER.
200 Percent
Since 2000, there has been a 200 percent increase in the number of continuation patents – meaning patents related to existing drugs – that brand name drug makers have filed, according to an August 2023 analysis in JAMA. Meanwhile, there has only been a 15 percent increase in the number of original patents filed.
7/10
Seven out of the 10 largest drug manufacturers spent more on marketing expenses than research and development (R&D) in 2020, according to an October 2021 report from AHIP.
$ 36 Billion
Selling and marketing expenses for the ten largest drug manufacturers by revenue exceeded R&D investments by $36 billion in 2020, according to an October 2021 report from AHIP.
210
U.S. taxpayers have funded research that has contributed to every single one of the 210 new drugs that the FDA approved between 2010-2016.
Blame Game
$275 Million
In 2022 and 2023, Big Pharma spent at least $275 million fighting against drug pricing solutions and pushing a debunked blame game designed to evade accountability, point a finger at others in the supply chain and keep drug prices high.
$ 52 Million
According to a November 2023 report in POLITICO, PhRMA donated more than $50 million to dark money groups in 2022 to oppose prescription drug pricing solutions in Congress.
87 to 11
By a margin of 76 percent, the vast majority of U.S. voters agree with the statement, “Lawmakers in Congress should reject the pharmaceutical industry’s blame game targeting others in the supply chain, and instead focus on holding brand name drug companies accountable to lower prescription drug prices” after being told, “the pharmaceutical industry has waged a multi-year campaign seeking to blame others in the prescription drug supply chain for high drug costs, including pointing a finger at pharmacy benefit managers and hospitals,” according to a 2023 poll from CSRxP.
What They Are Saying
You’d think that the biggest drug companies with the biggest R&D budgets would have the most productive research labs. But it doesn’t work that way. Large companies tend to be bureaucratic, risk-averse and much more focused on increasing profits from their existing drug product lines.
Avik Roy & Gregg Girvan, Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity
The available evidence suggests that the U.S., on average, has higher prices for prescription drugs, and that’s particularly true for brand-name drugs.