#abbvie

Healthcare is broken. Big Pharma is mainly responsible.

U.S. sales of the 20 top-selling drugs totaled $101.1 billion in 2020, while sales of these drugs to the rest of the world totaled only $57 billion, highlighting how Americans massively overpay for drugs, a new Public Citizen report found.

Some drugs saw greater disparities than others. For example, AbbVie earned $16,112,000,000 from U.S. sales of the autoimmune drug Humira, compared to $3,720,000,000 from international sales, or more than four times as much. For 17 of the 20 top-selling drugs worldwide, Big Pharma made more from U.S. sales than from sales to all other countries combined, and for 11 of the 20, U.S. sales revenue was double that of the rest of the world or more, the report found.

Additionally, 11 of the 13 pharmaceutical companies selling these top drugs made more money in the U.S. from these drugs than they did in the rest of the world combined.

The analysis offers a glimpse of how much these businesses benefit from the American health care system overpaying for drugs. The U.S. is one of the only high-income countries not to negotiate the price of drugs. Granting Medicare the authority to push back against pharmaceutical company profiteering would mean an end to decades of overpaying for medicines and would save the U.S. billions of dollars.

“This eye-popping rip off Big Pharma is getting away with is an insult to the American people,” said Rick Claypool, a Public Citizen research director and co-author of the report. “Empowering Medicare to push back against inflated drug prices is the responsible and commonsense way to stand up to the industry’s greed – which, certain members of Congress should be reminded, lawmakers in both parties have been promising to do for years.”

👉🏿 https://www.citizen.org/news/report-for-17-top-selling-drugs-big-pharma-made-more-from-u-s-sales-than-from-the-rest-of-the-world-combined/

Last week, we learned that Merck is planning to charge Americans 40 times its cost for a COVID drug whose development was subsidized by the American government. The situation spotlights two sets of facts that have also gone largely unmentioned in the legislative debate over whether to let Medicare negotiate for lower drug prices.

Fact one: Americans are facing not merely expensive drugs, but prices that are examples of outright profiteering.

Fact two: In many cases, the medicines we are being gouged on are those that we the public already paid for.

Legalized drug cartels operating in plain sight. Using some of their tax cuts to Buy American — Hire American.

The Senate Finance Committee will have the opportunity to question the CEOs of Bristol-Myers Squibb, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Pfizer, Sanofi, AbbVie, and AstraZeneca. A livestream of the testimony will be available at the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance’s website.

Competition and Innovation replaced by Corporate Welfare

Americans pay the highest drug prices in the world for absolutely no good reason. The drug companies will tell you that it’s because American consumers are financing “innovation,” but the real reason is that the U.S. doesn’t have price control laws that limit what drug companies can charge, unlike much of the world and every wealthy country. And U.S. senators, both Republicans and Democrats alike, are each raking in thousands of dollars every year from the pharmaceutical industry.

“The drug companies spent over $230 million lobbying last year alone.”

But how much do senators on the Finance Committee get directly from Big Pharma? Thanks to the website Open Secrets, we know exactly how much they got last year. And it’ll be helpful to keep that information in mind as these same people are questioning the drug company CEOs today.

☑️ Republicans 💰

Money to Republicans From the Pharmaceutical Industry in 2018

Chuck Grassley, Iowa- $12,000

Mike Crapo, Idaho - $131,800

Pat Roberts, Kansas - $27,500

Mike Enzi, Wyoming - $25,000

John Cornyn, Texas - $62,600

John Thune, South Dakota - $40,600

Richard Burr, North Carolina - $18,500

Johnny Isakson, Georgia - $68,000

Rob Portman, Ohio - $96,3508

Pat Toomey, Pennsylvania - $50,776

Tim Scott, South Carolina - $57,700

Bill Cassidy, Louisiana - $156,600

James Lankford, Oklahoma - $6,000

Steve Daines, Montana - $13,200

Todd Young, Indiana - $95,150

☑️ Democrat 💰

Money to Democrats From the Pharmaceutical Industry in 2018

Ron Wyden, Oregon - $76,220

Debbie Stabenow, Michigan - $97,531

Maria Cantwell, Washington - $35,232

Bob Menendez, New Jersey - $188,763

Tom Carper, Delaware - $143,550

Ben Cardin, Maryland - $67,374

Sherrod Brown, Ohio - $96,946

Michael Bennet, Colorado - $33,265

Bob Casey, Pennsylvania - $532,859

Mark Warner, Virginia - $59,733

Sheldon Whitehouse, Rhode Island - $54,696

Maggie Hassan, New Hampshire - $20,163

Two more drug-making giants will officially start selling popular commercial medications on the White House’s discounted pharmaceutical site as soon as Monday, CBS News exclusively learned.  American pharmaceutical companies Abbvie and Genentech become the 10th and 11th companies to provide their prescriptions at a reduced rate on the “TrumpRx” site. Abbvie, which struck a deal with the Trump…