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      President Joe Biden speaks about prescription drug costs

      I’m with Biden—Make the Gougers Negotiate

      Under the president’s anti-inflation policy passed last year, our Medicare program can now negotiate drug prices on our behalf, which will drastically lower what we are now forced to pay to the profiteers for certain drugs.

      Jim Hightower
      Sep 10, 2023

      We human beings sometimes do some terrible things in pursuit of the almighty dollar. But to our credit, one moral line most humans don’t cross is to gouge sick people on the price of medicines their lives depend on.

      Unless, of course, you count executives of giant pharmaceutical corporations as human beings. Gouging patients is their preferred business model.

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      drug price negotiations
      A woman receives mail-order prescription medicine.

      'No Surprise': Big Pharma Sues Biden Over Effort to Lower Drug Prices for Americans

      "This legal action underscores how critical it is to have a president in the White House who will fight for lower health costs for Americans," said U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden.

      Julia Conley
      Jun 21, 2023

      Aiming to protect wealthy pharmaceutical companies from any reduction in their tens of billions of dollars in annual profits or lavish CEO compensation packages, the industry's biggest lobbying group on Wednesday announced a lawsuit against the Biden administration over its policy allowing Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices for consumers.

      Part of the Inflation Reduction Act that was passed last year, the Medicare negotiation provision has been a key demand of progressives including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) for several years, as the United States pays more per person for prescribed drugs than any other country and nearly a third of Americans said in one survey last year that they have avoided taking medications due to costs.

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      Eli Lilly & Co. CEO David Ricks

      Why Should Drug Corporations Like Merck and Eli Lilly Even Exist?

      These predatory corporations try to present themselves as socially responsible, but their business model continues to hurt the very people they claim to care about.

      Richard Eskow
      Jun 15, 2023

      How do Big Pharma executives have the nerve to show their faces in public, much less threaten to sue the government that has enriched them with the treasure—and the lives—of the American public? Government-funded discoveries have given drug companies like Merck and Eli Lilly much, if not most, of their patented technology. The government’s lax attitude toward drug company predation and criminality has made them even richer.

      A recent staff report from the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee and its chairman, Sen. Bernie Sanders, found that “the average price of new treatments over the past 20 years that NIH scientists helped invent is $111,000 – more than ten times the price that led the NIH to first introduce a reasonable pricing clause in 1989.”

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