For Immediate Release: Friday, July 26, 2019
Contact: Becca Rose becca.rose@berlinrosen.com 202-290-2302
Bold Action Needed to Stop PhRMA’s Price Gouging
Washington, DC – Ahead of today’s House Oversight Hearing on the devastating impacts of skyrocketing drug prices, Health Care for America Now Executive Director, Margarida Jorge, released the following statement:
“Bold legislative action to stop Big PhRMA’s price gouging is long overdue. As long as drug corporations continue to retain the power to set their own prices, their greed will rob people of the life-saving medication they need and kill Americans. The time for tweaks on transparency, generic drugs or rebates is over. We need change that addresses the fundamental problem that prescription drug companies have rigged the rules and seized control over our medicines and our lives.
“Drug companies have raised the prices of thousands of drugs over the past six months, with average price increases five times the rate of inflation, while reaping higher and higher profits. Every day in the United States, millions of people go without medicines they need to stay healthy or treat sickness because they can’t afford the price of their prescriptions. It doesn’t have to be this way. No family should have to choose between putting food on the table or following their doctor’s orders to take basic medicines like insulin.
“It’s up to lawmakers to take real action, not just offer lip service. President Trump keeps touting lower drug prices, but the truth is he has rewarded PhRMA again and again for ripping off patients in order to increase profit margins for themselves. Trump’s tax law rewarded industry giants with huge tax breaks last year: Eli Lilly paid no federal income tax in 2018 despite $9 billion in revenue from their diabetes medications alone. Trump may talk a good game, but behind the scenes he’s negotiated a NAFTA 2.0 deal that allows PhRMA to lock in high drug prices for the next decade. Enough is enough. It’s time to break up the pharmaceutical monopolies and put medicine for people ahead of massive PhRMA profit.”
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Health Care for America Now (HCAN) is the national grassroots coalition that ran a $60 million five-and-a-half year campaign from 2008-2013 to pass, protect, and promote the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and protect Medicare and Medicaid. HCAN has come back together to fight the Republicans’ all-out effort to take away America’s health care and put people at the mercy of the health insurance companies again.
