Big Pharma Is Massively Overcharging Americans
Drugmakers are up in arms over a new program allowing Medicare to negotiate prices on some drugs. The real scandal, of course, is the absurd prices the companies set for these drugs’ sale in the United States, when they are sold for so much less elsewhere.
Xarelto, pictured here, is one of the prescription drugs that will be subject to Medicare price negotiations under the Inflation Reduction Act. (Scott Olson / Getty Images)
In response to this week’s launch of a new program letting Medicare negotiate lower prices for a handful of medicines, drugmakers are insisting that the initiative will limit patients’ access to medicine and stifle the development of new cures.
However, all ten of the drugs up for negotiation are already being sold in other countries at fractions of what pharmaceutical companies are charging for them in the United States, according to our review — and drugmakers are reporting huge revenues from those foreign sales.
In some cases, Americans — whose tax money subsidizes the development of virtually all medicines approved for sale in the United States — are being charged 1,000 percent more than foreign patients for the same drugs.
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