Drug Companies Lobby To Keep Increasing Drug Prices
The Los Angeles Times reported drug companies are spending millions to kill California’s Drug Price Relief Act. Drug companies have contributed about $70 million to defeat the act.
The Drug Price Relief Act was designed to keep drug prices low for people who use state medical programs like Medi-Cal. It would do this by having California pay only the same or less than what it pays for the same drugs used by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
The pharmaceutical industry is spending a lot of money to kill or severely water down the bill. Michael Weinstein, leading backer of the bill and president of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, thinks the pharmaceutical industry will end up spending over $100 million because “They see this as the apocalypse for their business model.”
Unfortunately the drug industry might be successful. Industry lobbyists were successful in severely watering down Senate Bill 1010. The Sacramento legislation would have made it mandatory for drug companies to make their pricing strategy transparent. Companies would have been required to detail production costs and explain pricing and price increases.
Unfortunately state Senator Ed Hernandez retracted the legislation after lobbyists were able to gut it in favor of pharmaceutical companies.
Pharmaceutical companies having been running amuck when is comes to raising the prices of drugs, and having been doing so at the expense of people’s lives and well-being.
Gilead Sciences decided to increase the price of one hepatitis C drug Sovaldi pill to $1,000, and Turing Pharmaceuticals purchased rights to a parasite drug used by AIDS and cancer patients and raised the price by 5,000%.
The pharmaceutical company Mylan has joined in on the greed game, and blamed its greed on the system. The company has jacked up the price of its EpiPens by over 400%. There is about a dollars worth of epinephrine in each EpiPen and some retailers sell a set of EpiPens for $700.
