Time To Rein In All Drug Prices By Sonali Kolhatkar
Major pharmaceutical companies in the United States are battling with Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders over an issue that is at the heart of whether we value human wellbeing over corporate profits . As chair of the Senate Committee on Health , Education , Labor , and Pensions ( HELP ), Sanders has vowed to force CEOs of pharmaceutical companies to publicly answer for why their drug prices are so much higher than in other nations . He plans to bring a committee vote to subpoena them . The subpoenas are necessary because — brazenly — the CEOs of Johnson & Johnson and Merck have simply refused to testify to the HELP committee . What are they afraid of ?
In a defensive-sounding letter to Sanders , an attorney for Johnson & Johnson accused the Senator of using committee hearings to “ punish the companies who have chosen to engage in constitutionally protected litigation .” The letter does not specify the litigation in question — perhaps because it would sound so ridiculous and would reveal the company ’ s real agenda . Last July , the company , along with Merck and Bristol Myers Squibb sued the Biden administration for allowing the Medicare program to regulate prescription drug prices .
It appears that Johnson & Johnson and Merck are indeed afraid of being questioned by lawmakers about drug-profiteering in the U . S .
One pharmaceutical expert , Ameet Sarpatwari of Harvard Medical School explained to the New York Times that , “ The U . S . market is the bank for pharmaceutical companies … There ’ s a keen sense that the best place to try to extract profits is the U . S . because of its existing system and its dysfunction .” Another expert , Michelle Mello , a professor of law and health policy at Stanford university , told the Times , “ Drugs are so expensive in the U . S . because we let them be .”
“ The $ 747 billion that the pharmaceutical companies distributed to shareholders was 13 percent greater than the $ 660 billion that these corporations expended on research & development over the decade .”
42 x The Trial Lawyer