In her book, ‘The Truth about the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What To Do About It’, Marcia Angell MD writes, “The combined profits for the top ten drug companies in the Fortune 500 ($35.9 billion) were more than the profits for all the other 490 businesses put together ($33.7 billion).”
Angell suggests that drug companies have made a significant departure from an initial motivation to discover and manufacture beneficial new drugs to one of greed and moral decline whereby drug companies are essentially marketing machines pushing a host of drugs of questionable benefit. She points out that Big Pharma use their colossal wealth and consequent power to get any institution on board that can serve their bottom line, from the medical profession to the FDA, all the way up to U.S. Congress.
Facts About the Drug Industry in the U.S. (sources include Marcia Angell, WHO, IMS Health Report, Peter Rost's, 'The Whistelblower: Confessions of a Healthcare Hitman')
- Despite the drug industry’s message to the public, R & D accounts for a relatively small part of their costs, especially when compared with marketing and administration, which soaks up about 36% of sales revenue; 250% more than R&D (Marcia Angell MD).
- Many of the new innovative drugs are developed not by the drug companies, but by universities, biotech firms or the NIH which is largely tax-payer funded research.
- The great majority of drugs marketed as ‘new drugs’ are ‘me too’ drugs – same wine, different bottle. Drugs companies are in a frenzy to discover genuine ‘breakthrough’ drugs as patents on many of their ‘cash cow’ drugs draw to an end.
- IMS Health estimated in 2006 that the worldwide sale of prescription drugs was around $643 billion. The U.S. alone accounts for 45% of that figure, while making up less than 5% of the worldwide population.
- Among 191 member nations included in their study, the World Health Organization (WHO) ranks the U.S. health care system 37th in overall performance and 72nd by overall level of health.
- Americans pay considerably more for prescriptions drugs than any other country in the world – sometimes hundreds of percent more.
- Drug companies conduct unethical trials of new drugs on the vulnerable, sick and poor of developing nations (Sonia Shah).
- Amongst the crimes committed by Big Pharma are illegally overcharging Medicaid and Medicare, paying kickbacks to doctors, anti-competitive pricing practices, covert deals with generic drug manufacturers to keep cheap generic drugs off the shelves, promoting drugs for unapproved use, misleading advertising and hiding evidence of wrong doing in court trials.
- Civil and criminal fines barely make a dent in the earnings of Big Pharma. Pfizer paid $430 million in fines for promoting unapproved uses of Neurontin equating to just two months worth of sales revenue from the drug.
- Merck’s drug Vioxx killed about 60,000 patients which is about the number of Americans killed in the Vietnam War. This claim was made by David Graham of the FDA, much to the displeasure of his FDA bosses
- The drug companies keep armies of lawyers busy trying to extend patents for as long as possible before a drug goes generic, after which the price drops dramatically – up to 80%
Barack Obama to 'Take On' the Drug Companies
Drug companies are the strongest lobby group in Washington and give big sums of money to political campaigns. Early on in his campaign Barack Obama promised he would "take on the drug and insurance companies and hold them accountable for the prices they charge and the harm they cause". While campaigning Obama also promised to "allow Americans to buy their medicines from other developed countries if the drugs are safe and prices are lower outside the U.S."
The expectation was that Medicare would be given the authority to negotiate drug prices, being a huge and therefore powerful purchaser of drugs. According to a report released by the Boston Consulting Group, the drug companies would have stood to lose $10 billion to $30 billion in annual revenues.
Big Win for Big Pharma at Captial Hill
The White House recently confirmed that it has promised Big Pharma that any health care legislation will prevent the government from negotiating lower drug prices, which essentially amounts to the same deal George W. Bush struck in getting the Medicare drug benefit. The importation of low cost medicines was also beaten back by lobbyists -another broken promise made by Obama during his campaign. An article posted at the Huffington Post website provides details of the deal, including a document leaked from the White House.
This deal is yet another bonanza for the drug industry, given the growing number of seniors who will be enrolling in Medicare over the next decade and the estimated 32 million uninsured Americans to receive health coverage . If extended to Medicaid, it will be a gold mine for the drug companies. In return, Big Pharma has thrown down a figure of $80 billion to reduce drug costs to seniors and to pay for part of the cost of health care legislation. It will be interesting to see how this translates down the track.
Big Pharma must be feeling pretty good about universal health care -according to a New York Times article dated August 8, they are budgeting $150 million for T.V. advertising to promote it. Universal Health Care, sounds wonderful, but it's unnerving when clandestine deals are done in the White House to promise to legislate in terms that expressly favor the interests of corporations. Nevada Senator and U.S. Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid was recently exposed for accepting large sums of money from Big Pharma in order to shape and direct the recently passed health care bill in favor Big Pharma. Details of his involvement can be found in at Natural News in an article dated August 8.
In 1816, in a letter to George Logan, Thomas Jefferson wrote, “I hope we shall…crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations which are already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and to bid defiance to the laws of their country.”
Scott McGregor - Shortly after graduating with a Bachelor of Business from Charles Sturt University, where I received a foundation scholarship, I grew ...
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