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Showing posts with label Big Pharma. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Big Pharma. Show all posts
Thursday, September 26, 2019
Urge Democrats: Fight for a progressive plan to crack down on Big Pharma
Thursday, May 30, 2019
Sign if you agree: Block Speaker Pelosi's handout to Big Pharma
Petition to House Democrats:
"Reject Speaker Pelosi's Big Pharma-friendly plan for arbitration panels and support progressive plans to actually lower drug prices."
Add your name:
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Even though there are powerful progressive proposals to bring drug prices down, Pelosi's top health care aide spent weeks seeking to cut a deal with the Trump administration. And in a recent meeting of House Democrats, Pelosi officially announced her support for the proposal – and said the House would move on the legislation quickly after the Memorial Day recess.2,3 House Speaker Nancy Pelosi just announced her support for a confusing, complicated prescription drug plan that will help Big Pharma continue making billions from high drug prices.1
Earlier this year, Pelosi's top health policy aide assured industry executives they didn't need to worry about Medicare for All. Another advisor is a lobbyist for pharmaceutical benefit managers and represents many of the same companies running attack ads opposing Medicare for All. This is not a team capable of producing policies that put the American people above corporate interests.4,5
Under the Pelosi plan, the Department of Health and Human Services would negotiate with Big Pharma on only 25 drug prices each year. If they cannot come to an agreement, another agency would set a price through some undisclosed and potentially corporate-friendly process. The next year, Big Pharma could raise the price all over again.6
It's not like Pelosi doesn't have other options. CREDO members have spoken out in force in support of several truly progressive plans to break the power of Big Pharma monopolies and lower drug prices. Sen. Warren's plan would direct the government to manufacture generic drugs. Sens. Sanders and Merkley and Rep. Ro Khanna would force companies to follow international average prices or face tough consequences. Rep. Lloyd Doggett's bill would allow Medicare to negotiate discounts, and let the government issue a license to a competitor to produce a generic version of the drug if Big Pharma refuses to negotiate in good faith.7,8
Pelosi's preferred plan is a giveaway that would allow Big Pharma to maintain its bloodsucking grip on our medical system – and she needs to hear immediately from progressives and her fellow Democrats how terrible her approach is. Can you add your name today to tell House Democrats not to help Speaker Pelosi reward Big Pharma? Click below to sign the petition:
- Heidi Hess, CREDO Action
Add your name:
References:
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Friday, November 30, 2018
Tell Congress: Stop letting Big Pharma rip off Americans
Rep. Ro Khanna's and Sen. Bernie Sanders' bill would force pharmaceutical companies to reduce their prices or lose their lucrative monopolies.
Petition to Congress:
"Support the Prescription Drug Price Relief Act, which would stop Big Pharma from ripping off the American people and lower drug prices by more than 40 percent."
Add your name:
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Big Pharma knows it can count on Donald Trump to make noise about drug prices but stay loyal to pharmaceutical companies. After all, Trump appointed Alex Azar, whose company tripled the price of insulin and faces an investigation, as head of the Department of Health and Human Services.1
But the progressive wing of the Democratic Party has real plans to crack down on Big Pharma.
At the top of the list is a new bill from Rep. Ro Khanna and Sen. Bernie Sanders that would force pharmaceutical companies to reduce their prices or lose their lucrative monopolies.2 We need to show how many Americans support bold action against Big Pharma by getting behind this progressive proposal in a big way.
America, unlike most other countries, allows Big Pharma to set its own prices, hold exclusive patents with no limit and corner the market on a particular drug and jack up the price.3
So far in 2018, for every one cut in pharmaceutical prices, there were 96 drug price hikes. Pfizer already announced it will jack up prices on 41 more drugs in 2019. Meanwhile, 1 in 5 Americans cannot afford the medicine they need.4
No more. That's why we are standing with our friends at Social Security Works to support the big, bold, progressive Khanna-Sanders plan.
The Khanna and Sanders bill is simple. It says that Big Pharma must sell medicine for the same price or cheaper in the United States than it does in countries like the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Canada and Japan. If companies don't, the government will take away their monopoly – allowing other companies to produce cheaper, generic versions of the exact same drug.5
Almost every politician claims to want to do something about skyrocketing drug prices. Now we have a progressive plan that could lower prices by more than 40 percent across the board.6 Members of Congress must choose between Big Pharma's deep pockets and the American people's health.
One recent study found that taxpayer funding helped develop every single one of the 210 new FDA-approved medicines between 2010 and 2016. We are investing in new cures while Big Pharma spends more on advertising than research and development and ridiculously claims that companies need obscene profits to fund new cures.7
Big Pharma cannot keep charging Americans more for the same drugs – and members of Congress must take a clear stand to stop it.
Tell Congress: Stop letting Big Pharma rip off Americans. Click below to sign the petition:
- Josh Nelson,CREDO Action
Add your name:
References:
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Thursday, May 17, 2018
Stop Big Pharma from buying our health care system
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The petition to Novartis CEO Vas Narasimhan reads:
"Buying Trump's favor to keep drug prices sky high is unacceptable. Stop blocking Medicare from negotiating lower drug prices or resign from your position as Novartis CEO."
Add your name:
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In 2016, Donald Trump proposed letting Medicare negotiate lower prices for prescription drugs and said that anyone who opposed the idea was in Big Pharma's pocket. In 2017, pharmaceutical giant Novartis paid Trump's personal attorney Michael Cohen $1.2 million. Now, Trump has reportedly decided not to let Medicare negotiate lower prices – a huge gift to the pharmaceutical industry.1
Novartis CEO Vas Narasimhan is facing tough questions from Sen. Elizabeth Warren and calls to resign from progressive groups over his secretive and inappropriate payments to Trump's attorney.2
Sign our petition now to put a massive spotlight on Trump's phony populism and hold Big Pharma executives accountable for taking advantage of American consumers.
In a letter to Narasimhan sent by Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Richard Blumenthal on Monday, the senators pointed out that "the unusual series of payments by Novartis to the President's personal attorney raise obvious questions about corruption and whether Novartis and the Trump administration were engaged in a pay-for-play operation."
This isn’t how our country should work. Drug prices are already too high – and Medicare negotiation is one of the best tools we have to lower them.
Narasimhan and other key Novartis employees are feeling the pressure. On Monday, Narasimhan held a conference call with 5,000 of his top managers focused on regaining the public's trust.3 Then on Wednesday, the company's top lawyer resigned as a result of his role in the payments to Trump's attorney.4
Now it's up to us to make sure Narasimhan and all other Big Pharma CEOs know that price-gouging American consumers on life-saving prescription drugs – whether through outright corruption or otherwise – is completely unacceptable.
Tell Novartis CEO Vas Narasimhan: Resign from your position and stop blocking Medicare from negotiating lower prescription drug prices. Click the link below to sign the petition:
- Josh Nelson, CREDO Action
Add your name:
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Saturday, May 12, 2018
Stand with Sen. Sanders: Hold Big Pharma accountable for its role in the opioid crisis.
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Petition to Congress:
"Hold the big pharmaceutical companies accountable for fueling the deadly opioid crisis. Pass Sen. Sanders' Opioid Crisis Accountability Act of 2018."
Add your name:
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Big Pharma lied about how addictive opioid medications were, but not one company has faced real punishment for unleashing the opioid epidemic.1,2
Pharmaceutical companies told sales reps to claim that opioids like OxyContin were less addictive and less likely to be abused than other painkillers. Purdue Pharmaceutical admitted as much in a settlement in 2007 but paid only a fraction of its profits as punishment.3
Sen. Bernie Sanders has a tough new bill that would hold Big Pharma accountable for the opioid epidemic, and it is exactly the kind of bold legislation that we need to show has huge support from the American people.
Purdue Pharmaceutical paid $600 million in fines as penalty for misleading us about the risks of OxyContin – but the same drug raked in $22 billion in profit for the company over the last decade. As Purdue and other Big Pharma giants got rich, painkillers prescribed after injuries or surgeries hooked countless Americans on opioids and fueled an epidemic that has killed more Americans than the Vietnam War.4
Sen. Sanders's bill would impose the harshest penalties yet on opioid manufacturers:5,6
The first step to responding to the opioid crisis is tackling the source of the problem. For too long, companies have looked the other way or misled the public in order to keep the money flowing while families were torn apart and lives lost. It's long past time for accountability for Big Pharma's role in the opioid epidemic.
Sen. Sanders makes it abundantly clear why this bill is so badly needed:
"We know that pharmaceutical companies lied about the addictive impacts of opioids they manufactured. They knew how dangerous these products were but refused to tell doctors and patients. Yet, while some of these companies have made billions each year in profits, not one of them has been held fully accountable for its role in an epidemic that is killing tens of thousands of Americans every year."7
Republicans and corporate Democrats aren't going to like the sound of this. It's up to us to show mass popular support when members of Congress put forth tough, bold legislation – and put cracking down on Big Pharma at the top of the agenda.
Stand with Sen. Sanders: Hold Big Pharma accountable for the opioid crisis. Click below to sign the petition:
- Josh Nelson, Co-Director, CREDO Action
Add your name:
References:
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Wednesday, November 1, 2017
Tell your Senators to support the Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Act
Medicare, the country’s largest buyer of prescription medicine, is also the only government health program banned from negotiating its own prices. Pharma CEOs are laughing at us.
But that could all change with a new bill, the Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Act. It’s incredibly simple: the bill allows Medicare to negotiate drug prices with pharmaceutical corporations, instead of being forced to accept whatever arbitrary price Big Pharma wants to set.
If we wanted to know what would happen if we changed the law, we don’t have to rely on guesses or projections: we just need to look at Medicaid and the Department of Veteran Affairs. Medicaid and the VA, unlike Medicare, are allowed to negotiate prices directly with the drug corporations. The result: those programs routinely pay much less for the same drugs than Medicare, often by as much as 73%.
It’s time to end this blatant Big Pharma giveaway. Tell your senators: this is pure common sense. Get on board with it now.
This isn’t a big, radical demand. It’s incredibly simple. And, maybe most importantly for your senators, it’s also one of the most popular ideas in politics right now: one poll last year found a whopping 93% of Democrats and 74% of Republicans support letting Medicare negotiate.
Universal healthcare will be a long, difficult road. But this? This is easy, it’s practical, it will save money, and it will have an immediate benefit for our senior citizens. It’s a no-brainer. And with a lot of senators increasingly desperate for a win as we approach the 2018 midterms, an idea this popular has a very strong chance of becoming real.
Join us in supporting the Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Act, and let’s start cutting Big Pharma down to size.
MESSAGE READS (personalize for more impact)
As your constituent, I know that 92% of Americans of all political persuasions support allowing Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices with pharmaceutical corporations.
The Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Act of 2017 introduced by your colleagues Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Sen. Patrick Leahy, Rep. Lloyd Doggett, and Rep. Peter Welch is a chance to fix this. I’m asking you to stop the empty rhetoric and start standing up for us by supporting their bill.
-John Sellers, Other98
Saturday, May 27, 2017
Wipe that greedy grin off of Big Pharma's face!
Big Pharma is gouging us and everyone knows it. Even Donald Trump promised to do something to stop skyrocketing pharmaceutical prices. But right now, there is a Bill before Congress that could finally break the drug corporations’ overwhelming monopoly -- and we need to make sure it passes.
Drug companies have gotten away with brazen acts of extortion for too long. From “Pharma-bro” Martin Shkreli’s 5,000% price hike on a cancer drug to Mylan’s executives pocketing hundreds of millions off its sixfold increase to the indispensable EpiPen, this has to end.
That’s why we’re working with a fierce coalition of partners to break up Big Pharma’s monopoly once and for all. With the people power behind Daily Kos, Public Citizen, Corporate Accountability International and we have a real opportunity to win.
Let’s come together to make sure The Affordable Prescription Drugs Act passes now so we can put a stop to these injustices once and for all.
Tell Congress: it’s time to stop drug corporations from ripping people off.
Our health system rewards drug companies with virtually unlimited control over the market and they use it to charge Americans more for lifesaving medication than anywhere else in the world.
Americans are already suffering from the greed of pharmaceutical corporations. Nearly 1 in 5 U.S. residents do not fill their prescriptions because they simply cannot afford them.
This Bill, the “Improving Access to Affordable Prescription Drugs Act,” is currently sponsored by 16 prominent Democrats including Al Franken, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, and aims to roll back drug company monopolies and hold Big Pharma to account for price-gouging.
If it were up to ordinary people, this Bill would pass instantly. An overwhelming majority of Americans agree: Congress must act to stop Big Pharma from extorting the sick, disabled and dying with ludicrously high prices for medicine that could save their lives.
But Congress has been infiltrated by the power of Big Pharma’s lobbyists. That’s why we need to show Congress the power of the people. It’s the only way we can ever get a system that works for us, and not for drug company CEOs.
Call on Congress to end Big Pharma’s criminal monopoly. Pass the Affordable Prescription Drugs Act now.
- the SumOfUs team
More information:
How to Stop Drug Price Gouging, NY Times, April 20, 2017
Americans Demand Lower Drug Prices: This Senate Bill Would Deliver, Huffington Post, March 30, 2017
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