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    Poor people in the developing world have a right to medicine | Bernie Sanders

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    Here is a simple moral proposition. No one in America, or anywhere in the world, should die or suffer unnecessarily because they cannot afford a prescription drug which, in many cases, costs a few cents or a few dollars to manufacture.As Chairman of the US Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee (Help) I’m going to do everything I can to develop a new approach to the development and manufacturing of prescription drugs that responds to medical need, rather than short-term shareholder profit. Given the power and greed of the pharmaceutical industry this is not an easy task, but it’s one that must be pursued.The tragic reality is that, today, millions of people around the world are suffering, and dying, from preventable diseases because they can’t afford the outrageous prices charged by pharmaceutical companies. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), one third of humanity lacks access to essential medicines. For a staggering number of people around the world, this leads to what the WHO calls “a cascade of preventable misery and suffering.”There are a number of reasons why this tragic reality continues to happen.First, too often drug companies abuse patent monopolies to charge outrageous prices or otherwise keep lifesaving drugs out of reach for people around the world. For example, the Boston-based drug company Vertex is neither selling a transformative new treatment for cystic fibrosis in the developing world, nor allowing other local companies to produce it. Put simply, the company is not only refusing to bring a life-raft to people drowning with cystic fibrosis in poor countries, it is also blocking others from deploying their own life-rafts to people who need them to stay alive.Second, far too often, the medicines that are desperately needed by millions of people in poor countries are not being produced by the pharmaceutical industry because the drug companies cannot make sufficient profits by doing so. In the US and other developed countries people often pay exorbitant prices for life-saving medicines. Poor people in developing countries can’t. They don’t have the money. The result: they die. Because the business model of the pharmaceutical industry values dollars gained over lives saved, there are not enough companies looking for transformative treatments, especially for diseases that afflict poor people.Consider the case of tuberculosis (TB) – a disease that killed more than 1.3 million people in 2022, and is on the rise as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. The TB vaccine still used today is more than a hundred years old, and only protects young children, even though adolescents and adults account for the majority of TB transmission. The testing of a promising new publicly-funded TB vaccine that could potentially save millions of lives was delayed after its corporate owner, GSK, decided to focus on more profitable vaccines.The scientist who brought GSK the idea of the TB vaccine decades ago now acknowledges that Big Pharma cannot deliver for developing countries. “You get a big company to take it forward? Bullshit,” he told ProPublica. “That model is gone. It’s failed. It’s dead. We have to create a new one.”Clearly, we must do better. The life of a millionaire in New York City is not worth more than the life of a person living in extreme poverty in South Sudan.Fundamentally, we need to transform how we pay for the development of new prescription drugs. This starts with funding open-source research, so lifesaving information is shared, and scientists around the world can work together to research and manufacture their own breakthroughs. Patents should not stand in the way of public health.If we can provide $886bn to the Pentagon for military spending, we can provide scientists with the money they need to develop cutting-edge cures that are accessible to everyone.People should not die because of their income or where they were born. We know what it will take to save lives. Now we must have the courage to stand up to the pharmaceutical industry. Let’s do it.
    Bernie Sanders is a US Senator, and chairman of the health education labor and pensions committee. He represents the state of Vermont, and is the longest-serving independent in the history of Congress More

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      Drugmaker Eli Lilly says it will cut insulin prices by 70%

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      Drugmaker Eli Lilly says it will cut insulin prices by 70%Move comes amid criticism of healthcare companies over rising costs of insulin, as CEO says cuts ‘should be the new standard’Eli Lilly will cut list prices by 70% for its most commonly prescribed forms of insulin, Humalog and Humulin, beginning from the fourth quarter of this year, the drugmaker said on Wednesday.The move comes amid criticism of healthcare companies by US lawmakers over rising costs of insulin, with Joe Biden’s signature Inflation Reduction Act including a $35 cap on insulin for those enrolled in Medicare health insurance plans.More than a million Americans ration insulin due to high costsRead more“While we could wait for Congress to act or the healthcare system in general to apply that standard, we’re just applying it ourselves,” the company’s chief executive, Dave Ricks, told CNN in an interview.The drugmaker will also lower the price of its non-branded insulin injection Lispro to $25 a vial and expand its Insulin Value Program, under which the $35 cap will apply to about 85% of US pharmacies.Rick said patients using other pharmacies that do not participate in the program can get a rebate through the drugmaker’s website.He said the price cuts “should be the new standard in America” and called on other companies and stakeholders “to meet up at this point”.“Insulin has become such a pivotal issue because of affordability,” Rick said.About 8.4 million of the 37 million people in the United States with diabetes use insulin, according to the American Diabetes Association.Eli Lilly, along with Sanofi and Novo Nordisk, makes up 90% of the US market for insulin.Drugmakers had previously priced insulin at more than $275 a vial, representing a 1,200% increase in price over the past 20 years, according to the advocacy group Insulin Initiative.TopicsPharmaceuticals industryDiabetesUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Biden declared victory over big pharma – but is it enough to sway senior voters?

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      Biden declared victory over big pharma – but is it enough to sway senior voters?The Inflation Reduction Act aims to reduce the cost of drugs, but the law’s limitations may not help the Democrats in the midterms At a Labor Day speech in Milwaukee, Joe Biden declared nothing less than victory over the pharmaceutical industry.“We beat pharma!” Biden said, leaning into the microphone. “We beat pharma this year, and it mattered. We’re going to change people’s lives.”The president was referring to the August passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, which, among widely touted provisions to fight the climate crisis and tax big corporations, also aims to reduce prescription drug costs for seniors. The law allows Medicare to begin negotiating with pharmaceutical companies on some expensive drugs – a long-sought goal for activists and the key “victory” that Biden believes he has scored over the powerful pharmaceutical lobby.What Biden did not mention in his speech, however, was that the law also includes limits on those negotiations – meaning analysts believe it may be some time before the scorekeepers decide whether to declare Biden the winner.It also means that the Democrats could have difficulty using the accomplishment in their next big test, the midterm elections, where they hope to win over seniors – at least those who have not decided how they will vote.Biden’s landmark climate and spending bill – what’s in it, and what got cut?Read more“The impact on the election will be if you can convince people over age 60 that they really will be seeing something to help them with their drug costs,” said Robert Blendon, a professor of health policy and political analysis at Harvard University. “But if somebody tells them they are not going to see that until 2026, that’s not as exciting as ‘I really expect this year I’m going to get relief with the bills I have.’”The pharmaceutical part of the IRA law requires the federal government to start negotiating for some expensive drugs covered under Medicare – but not until 2026, and only with 10 retail prescription drugs that year, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Another 15 retail drugs will be eligible for negotiation starting the following year, then 35 more in 2028 and 2029, including drugs administered by physicians.The act also requires pharmaceutical companies to pay rebates to Medicare if they increase drug prices faster than inflation; and, beginning in 2025, a $2,000 annual cap that means nobody on Medicare would have to pay more than that amount out of their own pocket.“Despite their limitations, the drug pricing reform provisions of the [act] have the potential to transform the ways in which Medicare pays for drugs, and to provide financial benefits to millions of seniors who have difficulty affording their medications,” Rachel Sachs, a Washington University law professor and expert in health law, wrote in Health Affairs.Biden has tried to make political hay out of the deal to reduce drug costs. He has called out his opponents for not supporting the measures, reminding listeners that all Republicans voted against the Inflation Reduction Act.“For decades, big pharma won – year in, year out – because they own chunks of the Congress – because they had help, like your senior senator, Ron Johnson,” Biden told the crowd in Wisconsin, referring to the Republican lawmaker who is up for re-election this year. Johnson’s opponent, the lieutenant governor of Wisconsin, Mandela Barnes, has also criticized the incumbent’s ties to the pharmaceutical industry.But recent polling indicates that despite the drug price “win”, the race is a toss-up. Democrats are favored to retain control of the Senate, but Republicans are favored to take control of the House, according to the most recent modeling from the FiveThirtyEight.Democrats’ struggles could be because voters are less concerned with the pharmaceutical industry than they are other issues. A majority of voters told a recent survey from Politico and Harvard that inflation, the economy and jobs, gun policy, abortion and gas prices all rank ahead of healthcare (at least non-Covid-19 healthcare) in the list of what will affect their decisions in the midterms.The Covid-19 pandemic and surrounding upheaval in recent years “has made people unbelievably short-term in how they think about the issues,” Blendon added.The number of drugs affected by the new law is also very limited. And since the requirements won’t immediately take effect, they could be reversed or softened by a Republican administration, said Simon Haeder, professor of public health at Texas A&M University.“We will really see if it’s a big deal maybe five, 10 years down the line, and the only way this turns into a big deal is if this is a nose or the toes in the door kind of thing and spurs larger changes,” said Haeder.Also, since the healthcare provisions are part of a wider law on climate and corporation taxes, voters may not be aware of what it does about drug prices specifically, Blendon said.Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster, argues the healthcare provisions will not make much difference in the midterms. The breakthrough on drug price negotiations will be “subsumed by other broader issues about inflation, crime, immigration, the future of democracy, education and broader healthcare issues that go well beyond the limited negotiation for a small number of drugs.”The key for Democrats in making sure that’s not the case, Blendon argues, is advertising.“If you were working in the White House, you want everything to try to highlight the drug price provisions, particularly in districts with older people,” he said. “If they are aware that something is being done for people over age 60, 65 for drug prices, it will help the Democrats.”AARP (formerly known as the American Association of Retired Persons) is trying to increase awareness of how the law could benefit people over 65, who are eligible for Medicare. The organization has published articles, held town hall meetings and devoted its September monthly bulletin to explaining the law.Leigh Purvis, the director of AARP’s healthcare costs and access, thinks the law could help Democrats with the delays in drug price negotiation requirements, because some parts of it – notably the rebates for inflation, and the cap on insulin payments – take effect next year.“This law is effectively starting very soon, and it’s just a matter of helping people see those changes and recognize them for what they are and what caused them,” Purvis said.TopicsUS politicsPharmaceuticals industryUS MedicarefeaturesReuse this content More

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      Republicans vote against insulin bill as price soars, dismaying diabetics

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      Republicans vote against insulin bill as price soars, dismaying diabeticsCost of the life-saving drug will remain many times higher than in other affluent countries after Republicans defeated the measure During the Covid-19 pandemic, Erin Connelly had to ration insulin while transitioning to a different health insurance plan. When Connelly heard the Biden administration was planning to cap the price of the life-saving drug, she was delighted. She was soon to be disappointed.The prices of insulin has soared in the US in recent decades and is more than eight times higher in the US than in 32 comparable, high-income nations, according to a Rand Corporation study.With an average list price of $98.70 per unit in the US, compared with $7.52 in the UK, US insulin sales account for nearly half the pharmaceutical industry’s insulin revenue, though the US makes up only about 15% of the global market.Many diabetics require several vials of insulin a month, in addition to the costs of medical supplies and monitoring equipment. A 2022 study by CharityRx found 79% of Americans with diabetes or who care for someone with diabetes reported taking on credit card debt to pay for insulin, with an average debt of $9,000. One in four Americans have reported rationing insulin due to the high costs, which can be fatal.As part of the Inflation Reduction Act passed in the Senate this week, the Biden administration proposed a $35 monthly cap on the cost of insulin in the private market. But the proposal was blocked by Republicans. Connelly, a type 1 diabetic from Illinois who was diagnosed at the age of 33, said she was “devastated”.“I believe the profit margin on my life must be really good, otherwise, we would be a bigger focus and a bigger part of these healthcare negotiations,” she said. “People are actually dying from this and it’s beyond price gouging. They’re holding us for ransom.“As we see things like Covid and different viruses come in and attack bodies in ways that we don’t understand, we’re seeing higher rates of people with type 1 diabetes later in life like I was, so this should be a primary concern for public health officials,” she said.Thanks to budgetary rules the proposal needed 60 votes to pass in the Senate. It received 57, with all Democrats and seven Republicans voting in favor of the proposal, though the Senate parliamentarian did allow the cap on co-pays for Medicare, the government health insurance program for those 65 and older.The vote incited criticism against Republicans from diabetes advocates who have been pushing for legislation to cap the cost of insulin in the US.But even a cap on private insurance co-pays wouldn’t have affected the real price of insulin in the US. The proposal would merely have limited the co-pay for the price of insulin to $35 for those with private insurance, with insurance expected to cover the difference. It would also probably have resulted in increases for insurance premiums. Those without insurance would still have been expected to pay exorbitant prices for insulin.“The co-pay caps aren’t price caps. All they effectively do is if you have insurance or Medicare, the $35 is your maximum co-pay,” said Laura Marston, co-founder of the advocacy group the Insulin Initiative and a type one diabetic. “That doesn’t change the underlying price of what someone without insurance pays for insulin, which in and of itself is concerning and scary from a patient’s point of view because I know first-hand how hard it can be as a type 1 diabetic in this country to get and keep health insurance.”Marston pointed out that pharmaceutical companies such as Eli Lilly have supported the insurance co-pay caps. While she was disappointed by the failure of the co-pay cap proposal, even if she feels it fell short of a real solution to the problem, she is also concerned about the lack of political will to take on the pharmaceutical industry and cap the actual prices of insulin.More than 100,000 Americans died in 2021 from diabetes. More than 30 million Americans are diagnosed with type 1 or type 2 diabetes and over 7 million require daily insulin – all type 1 diabetics and many type 2 diabetics.For now diabetics and their families who were hoping for some relief are back where they started – paying exorbitant fees for a life-saving medicine.“We’ve been trying to no avail to get an actual insulin price cap introduced that would say to insulin makers, you cannot charge more than say, we’ll just say $20 a vial, or basically you cannot charge more than what you charge in other countries for insulin. And it felt like it fell on deaf ears as soon as this co-pay cap was introduced,” said Marston. “I don’t know why they introduced something seemingly half hearted, not really designed to be a solution to the problem.”TopicsDiabetesPharmaceuticals industryBiden administrationUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Test to Treat: pharmacists say Biden’s major new Covid initiative won’t work

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      Test to Treat: pharmacists say Biden’s major new Covid initiative won’t workProgram to facilitate access to antivirals will have a limited impact because pharmacists are restricted from prescribing the pills A major new Biden administration initiative to facilitate access to Covid-19 antivirals will have a limited impact and fail to mitigate certain health inequities, major pharmacist groups argue, because pharmacists are restricted from prescribing the pills.Announced in Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, the “Test to Treat” program is meant to address the maddening difficulty Americans have had in accessing Covid-19 treatments. The administration will channel newly increasing stocks of antiviral pills to major retail pharmacies that have in-house clinics, providing one-stop testing and antivirals access.The program, which the administration aims to provide for free (in the face of fierce Republican opposition to new Covid-19 spending), is also slated to roll out in Veterans Affairs clinics, community health centers and long-term care facilities.Major participants include some 250 Walgreens stores, 225 Kroger Little Clinics and 1,200 CVS MinuteClinics. CVS clinics in particular are staffed by nurse practitioners and physician assistants, authorized by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to prescribe the two currently available Covid antivirals, Pfizer’s Paxlovid and Merck and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics’ molnupiravir.In a 9 March letter to Biden calling for pharmacists to be granted authority to prescribe these pills, 14 organizations representing pharmacies and pharmacists insisted Test to Treat’s impact will be compromised by the fact that such in-house clinics are relatively limited in number and largely in urban areas.“Unfortunately, rural and underserved communities are less likely to benefit from your test to treat approach because of this limitation,” the letter states.According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 90% of Americans live within five miles of one of approximately 60,000 pharmacies.“The FDA is still blocking us from leveraging the most accessible healthcare provider out there to make sure that these patients can get these drugs easily,” said Michael Ganio, a Columbus, Ohio pharmacist, senior director of pharmacy practice and quality at the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists, which is a signatory of the letter to Biden.“As far as expanding access,” said Ganio, Test to Treat is “not doing a lot”.The need for Covid-19 antivirals is likely to be greater in rural areas, at least on a per-capita basis. A recent CDC study found that through January, 58.5% of people aged five and older in rural counties had received at least one coronavirus vaccination shot, compared with 75.4% in urban counties.Paxlovid and molnupiravir are authorized for individuals at high risk of severe Covid-19, in particular unvaccinated people with certain medical conditions. Paxlovid was 88% effective at preventing hospitalization and death in its clinical trial. Molnupiravir proved just 30% effective. The FDA only authorizes its use when other treatments are unavailable or aren’t advised for an individual.Sufficient supply of Paxlovid will be key to Test to Treat. Since late December, the federal government has delivered a woefully inadequate 700,000 Paxlovid courses to states, the biweekly allotment increasing from 100,000 in January to 175,000 in March.The administration has claimed it will distribute 1m courses in March and 2.5m in April. A Pfizer representative would only state that the company plans to deliver a cumulative 10m courses by the end of June. The administration has agreed to purchase 20m courses, slated to be delivered by the end of September.In September 2021, the US Department of Health and Human Services amended a federal public health emergency law, the Prep Act, to grant licensed pharmacists the authority “to order and administer select Covid-19 therapeutics” – which at the time meant monoclonal antibodies and vaccines.But when the FDA authorized Paxlovid and molnupiravir in December, it explicitly restricted pharmacists from prescribing them.Authors of the letter to Biden say they submitted data to the FDA at the end of January, hoping to persuade it to grant pharmacists prescribing authority.These groups have also lobbied the federal government to ensure Medicare Part B would reimburse pharmacists for such prescribing – a move that would probably lead health insurers to follow.Prescribing Paxlovid safely can be challenging, because it may interact harmfully with other medications. Additionally, the FDA advises against providing the treatment to those with severe kidney or liver impairment. Experts have also raised concerns about molnupiravir’s potential toxicities. It cannot be prescribed to minors and is not advised for pregnant women.Chanapa Tantibanchachai, an FDA press officer, said the agency’s decision to forbid pharmacists from prescribing Paxlovid and molnupiravir “was based on several factors, including the drugs’ side-effect profiles, the need to assess potential for drug interactions, the need to assess potential kidney function problems (including the severity of potential problems), and the need to evaluate patients for pre-existing conditions” linked to severe Covid-19.Tantibanchachai said the FDA could revise the policy “as new data and information become available”.On 4 March, the American Medical Association said the “pharmacy based clinic component of the Test to Treat plan flaunts patient safety and risks significant negative health outcomes”. The AMA argued that by prescribing Covid antivirals at such clinics, providers may endanger patients for whom they lack a comprehensive medical history.The pharmacy groups insisted in their letter to Biden they have the expertise to prescribe these medications.In an email to the Guardian, Al Carter, executive director of the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy, stated: “Pharmacists have more complete access to the patients’ medication in comparison to physicians, especially since most patients have more than one prescriber, who don’t necessarily talk with each other.“Pharmacists spend their whole education focused on medications and their impacts on the body; whereas physicians take the minimal number of classes on pharmacology.”Katherine Yang, a clinical pharmacist at the University of California, San Francisco, said: “There are a lot of studies that show that when you increase services in community pharmacies, you improve care. In a lot of neighborhoods and rural areas, people may not have access to primary care, and pharmacists are the most accessible public health provider the patients can see.”TopicsCoronavirusBiden administrationUS domestic policyUS politicsPfizerPharmaceuticals industrynewsReuse this content More

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      Big pharma has a powerful new shill, Kyrsten Sinema, fighting drug price reform | Andrew Perez and David Sirota

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      OpinionPharmaceuticals industryBig pharma has a powerful new shill, Kyrsten Sinema, fighting drug price reformAndrew Perez and David SirotaIn the 2020 election cycle, pharmaceutical political action committees suddenly funneled more money to her than they did the whole six years she served in the US House Mon 11 Oct 2021 06.18 EDTLast modified on Mon 11 Oct 2021 12.42 EDT“The pharmaceutical lobby is very savvy,” Representative Ro Khanna, Democrat from California, said earlier this week. “They pick the one or two people they need to block things, on the relevant committees or at the relevant time.”“It may differ from Congress to Congress,” explained Khanna, who is a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. “We try to get 90-95% [of the caucus]. They are focused not on 90% , but the blockers.”In the current Congress, Big Pharma appears to have zeroed in on Senator Kyrsten Sinema, Democrat from Arizona, as one of their lead obstructionists to help kill or gut the Democrats’ drug pricing plan. In the 2020 election cycle, pharmaceutical political action committees suddenly funneled more money to her than they did the whole six years she served in the US House.Pharmaceutical companies can charge up to four times as much in the United States for name-brand pharmaceuticals than in other countries, in part because Congress barred Medicare from using its bulk purchasing power to negotiate lower drug prices. President Joe Biden and most Democrats support lifting that prohibition in their reconciliation legislation, a move that would save hundreds of billions of dollars – but Sinema has emerged as the party’s most prominent opponent to the plan.Her heel turn on drug pricing is a dramatic shift. A one-time progressive activist, Sinema campaigned on lowering drug prices in her 2018 Senate race, and she was still calling on Congress to address rising drug costs as recently as last year, boasting on her Senate website that she was fighting to “ensure life-saving drugs” would be more affordable.But it’s clear now that the pharmaceutical industry has been courting Sinema for some time. Indeed, in March 2021, as pharmaceutical Pac money was flooding into her campaign coffers, drug lobbyists were already bragging to Beltway reporters that they may have found their lead blocker in Sinema.Sinema has studiously avoided giving the public any details about where she stands on virtually any of the policy proposals in Democrats’ reconciliation legislation – refusing to speak with activists, reporters, or even other Democratic lawmakers.We only know Sinema opposes Democrats’ drug pricing plan thanks to a Politico report, which cited anonymous “sources familiar with her thinking”. Sinema reportedly told Biden she opposes the party’s proposal and won’t support a weaker offering from conservative House Democrats either.With the Senate split 50-50, her opposition imperils the whole endeavor.It makes sense that Sinema would be reluctant to publicly explain her opposition to Democrats’ drug pricing plan – because she would sound absolutely ridiculous, like a craven hypocrite straight out of Veep.During her 2018 Democratic primary campaign, Sinema released a direct-to-camera ad noting that her family had struggled with healthcare costs when she was younger. “We need to make healthcare more affordable, with access to the lowest-cost prescriptions, and fix what’s broken in the system,” she said in the ad.Sinema’s 2018 campaign website featured similar language: “Kyrsten is committed to making sure Arizonans have access to more health care choices, low-cost prescription drugs, and high-quality, dependable coverage. As one of the most independent-minded members of Congress, she’s committed to working with anyone – regardless of party – to get it done.”In a 2019 Senate hearing on prescription drug prices, Sinema noted, “The issue I hear about most back home is the cost of health care.” She went on to cite several stories from Arizonans who contacted her office about their sky-high drug costs:
      There’s a gentleman in Mesa, Arizona, who is lucky enough to be insured. But he has seen the price of his medication, to treat a serious lung condition, increase nearly five times in just one year … He’s looked, but there are no generics available that could offer him any financial relief. A woman from Glendale, Arizona, worries about her husband who has a serious heart condition. But his medication costs more than $500 out-of-pocket for a three-month supply. So he refuses to fill his prescription, because he’s worried about how it would impact their family financially. Another Arizona woman struggles to afford her specialty cancer medication. Even though her medication is a generic, she still has to pay thousands of dollars out-of-pocket. And often spends hours on the phone just to understand the unexpected cost increases, and to research payment assistance options. And this, of course, is unacceptable.
      In February last year, Sinema published an op-ed declaring: “Congress must address the cost of prescription drugs. Today, even Arizonans who have insurance sometimes struggle to afford the medicine they need. That’s why I’m pursuing policies to ensure life-saving drugs like EpiPens and insulin are affordable and available to Arizonans, especially our senior citizens.”But by then, drug industry cash was already starting to flood into Sinema’s campaign account.In May 2020, Kaiser Health News wrote that Sinema had recently “emerged as a pharma favorite in Congress”, based on the fact that she had become “a leading recipient of pharma campaign cash even though she’s not up for re-election until 2024 and lacks major committee or subcommittee leadership posts”.According to Kaiser’s pharma contribution tracker, Sinema received $121,000 worth of campaign donations from pharmaceutical company Pacs in 2019 and 2020.For some context, that’s double the amount of drug company Pac money she received during the 2018 election cycle, when she was on the ballot running for Senate. It’s more cash than she had raised from pharmaceutical company Pacs during her entire congressional career to that point.Over the course of her career, Sinema has accepted more than $500,000 from executives and Pacs in the pharmaceutical and health products industries, according to data from OpenSecrets.By March 2021, Big Pharma wasn’t just quietly funneling money to Sinema; the industry was publicly signaling that the senator could be its lead blocker in the fight to prevent the government from negotiating drug prices.“Drug lobbyists see a potential ally in Democratic Sen Kyrsten Sinema, the Arizona moderate who has shown a willingness to break with her party,” Politico reported at the time.Then, early last month, a corporate front group called Center Forward bought $600,000 worth of television and radio ads promoting Sinema in Arizona. The ads touted her “independence”, and characterized her as “a bipartisan leader” in the mold of the late Senator John McCain.As The Daily Poster reported, Center Forward has been heavily bankrolled by Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the powerful Washington drug lobby. Two Center Forward board members lobby for PhRMA, as well as drugmakers Amgen, Bayer, Gilead Sciences, Eli Lilly, Merck, Novartis and Sanofi.A few days after the ad campaign started, Sinema informed the White House that she opposed the party’s drug pricing plan.Now, senators are talking behind the scenes about ways they can water down the legislation to appease the drug industry, and a second Democratic holdout – Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, a longtime top recipient of drug industry cash – has emerged to help Sinema and Big Pharma block the way.For his part, Khanna said he has tried to reach out to Sinema. But though she was eagerly making herself available to her business donors opposing the reconciliation bill, she wasn’t interested in talking to the progressive congressman, even though he was one of the lead authors of the Medicare drug pricing bill.“I’ve never met with her,” he said. ‘I’ve offered. She didn’t want to.”
      David Sirota is a Guardian US columnist and an award-winning investigative journalist. He is an editor-at-large at Jacobin, and the founder of the Daily Poster. He served as Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign speechwriter
      Andrew Perez is a senior editor at the Daily Poster and a cofounder of the Democratic Policy Center
      This article was originally published in the Daily Poster, a grassroots-funded investigative news outlet
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      Guess what the three Democrats blocking lower medication prices have in common? | David Sirota and Andrew Perez

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      OpinionUS politicsGuess what the three Democrats blocking lower medication prices have in common?David Sirota and Andrew PerezA bill in Congress would allow Medicare to use its bulk-purchasing power to negotiate lower drug prices. Big Pharma is not pleased Mon 20 Sep 2021 06.25 EDTLast modified on Mon 20 Sep 2021 11.21 EDTThe three conservative Democratic lawmakers threatening to kill their party’s drug pricing legislation have raked in roughly $1.6m of campaign cash from donors in the pharmaceutical and health products industries. One of the lawmakers is the House’s single largest recipient of pharmaceutical industry campaign cash this election cycle, and another lawmaker’s immediate past chief of staff is now lobbying for drugmakers.The threat from Democratic representatives Kurt Schrader (Oregon), Scott Peters (California) and Kathleen Rice (New York) comes just as the pharmaceutical industry’s top lobbying group announced a seven-figure ad campaign to vilify the Democratic legislation, which aims to lower the cost of medicines for Americans now facing the world’s highest prescription drug prices.At issue is House Democrats’ initiative to let Medicare use its bulk purchasing power to negotiate lower prescription drug prices. That power – which is used by other industrialized countries to protect their citizens from exorbitant prices – has been promised by Democrats for years, and party leaders have been planning to include it as part of their sprawling $3.5tn infrastructure reconciliation effort.On Wednesday, Schrader, Peters and Rice helped vote the measure down in the powerful energy and commerce committee, blocking the legislation before it could come to the House floor for a vote. Even if the bill were to ultimately make it to the floor through another committee – which remains a possibility – Democrats have only a four-seat majority that allows them to pass legislation, so they can’t afford to lose any more votes.“I understand that the pharmaceutical industry owns the Republican party and that no Republican voted for this bill, but there is no excuse for every Democrat not supporting it,” said the Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders after the vote.The trio of Big Pharma Democrats are jeopardizing a plan based on HR 3, the Elijah E Cummings Lower Drug Costs Now Act. The Congressional Budget Office has said the drug pricing legislation, named for the late Representative Elijah Cummings of Maryland, would save the government $456bn and “reduce prices by 57% to 75%, relative to current prices” for various medicines.The measure would direct federal health regulators to negotiate prices of 25 high-priced drugs in the first year of implementation and 50 drugs in subsequent years, and the new negotiated prices would be available to both Medicare and private insurers.Polls show that the idea of allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices is wildly popular – to the point where swing-state Republicans and swing-district Democrats, and even former President Donald Trump, have expressed support for it.Schrader and Peters are among the two biggest recent Democratic recipients of pharmaceutical industry donations, according to OpenSecrets. The pharmaceutical and health products industries are collectively the second biggest donor to both lawmakers over the course of their careers, giving them almost $1.5m in total. Peters is the House’s top recipient of pharmaceutical industry donations in the 2022 election cycle.Big Pharma doesn’t want us to expand Medicare. We have to fight them | Bernie SandersRead morePeters and his family were worth an estimated $60m in 2018, making him one of the wealthiest lawmakers in Congress, according to OpenSecrets. His wife is the president and CEO of Cameron Holdings, an investment firm whose portfolio company provides manufacturing and packaging for pharmaceutical companies.Schrader’s net worth, meanwhile, was pegged at nearly $8m. The Oregonian reported in 2008 that he received “a quite large inheritance” from his grandfather, who was “vice president and director of biochemical research and development at Pfizer” – the drugmaker whose political action committee is now Schrader’s third largest career donor.The congressmen on Tuesday offered their own drug pricing proposal, which would allow Medicare to negotiate prices only under limited conditions, such as when a company no longer has exclusive marketing rights on an older drug but there are no competitors. That proposal was also backed by the Democratic representative Stephanie Murphy (Florida), the co-chair of the conservative Blue Dog Coalition, who is the House’s fifth largest recipient of donations from the pharmaceutical and health products industries.Earlier this year, Peters’ campaign saw a surge in donations from pharmaceutical company executives after he organized a letter with nine other Democratic lawmakers informing the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, that they opposed HR 3. Schrader and Rice co-signed the letter.It’s worth noting that Peters, Schrader and Rice all voted in favor of HR 3 in the previous Congress. Politico wrote in May that Peters “said he cast that vote knowing it had no chance of becoming law at the time. He said he supported it only to ‘start a conversation about lowering the cost of prescription drugs’.”Rice, Schrader and Peters have seats on the House energy and commerce committee, which is writing the party’s prescription drug plan, and they used those positions to help block the measure there on Wednesday, preventing it from moving to the floor.Last December, House Democrats’ steering committee voted to put Rice on the energy and commerce panel instead of the progressive New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.On Tuesday, Rice explained that she opposes the drug pricing measure because “I do not support advancing policies that are not fiscally responsible and jeopardize the bill’s final passage.”Schrader’s longtime top aide, Paul Gage, left the congressman’s office earlier this year, according to Legistorm, and quickly started lobbying for Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the powerful Washington drug lobby.Gage has been lobbying Congress on drug pricing issues and HR 3, according to ethics records. PhRMA raised more than $500m in 2019, and the organization is one of the top lobbying spenders in DC.On Wednesday, PhRMA announced it is launching an ad campaign against House Democrats’ drug pricing efforts. “Politicians say they want to negotiate medicine prices in Medicare,” one ad warns. “But make no mistake: What politicians mean is they’ll decide which medicines you can and can’t get.”The Blue Dog Coalition’s political action committee has been making monthly payments to a consulting firm led by the coalition’s former communications director, Kristen Hawn.Hawn is also a partner at the bipartisan public affairs firm ROKK Solutions, which has worked for PhRMA.
      David Sirota is a Guardian US columnist and an award-winning investigative journalist. He is an editor-at-large at Jacobin, and the founder of the Daily Poster. He served as Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign speechwriter
      Andrew Perez is a senior editor at the Daily Poster and a cofounder of the Democratic Policy Center
      This article was originally published in the Daily Poster, a grassroots-funded investigative news outlet
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      US officials call for more data on vaccine boosters as Pfizer pushes for third shot

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      PfizerUS officials call for more data on vaccine boosters as Pfizer pushes for third shot Pharma company presses case with senior health officials WHO urges priority for nations with low Covid vaccination rates Ankita RaoTue 13 Jul 2021 08.29 EDTLast modified on Tue 13 Jul 2021 08.49 EDTPfizer, the pharmaceutical company that created one of the first Covid-19 vaccines to be approved, has been making a hard sell for emergency approval of boosters – additional doses given to those already vaccinated, especially immunocompromised adults.But in private meetings with Pfizer on Monday, senior US officials said they needed more data – prompting the latest debate over how to curb a pandemic which has claimed more than 620,000 lives in the country. Last week, the US health department also rebuked Pfizer for pressing for a booster shot, and Anthony Fauci, Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, has said there isn’t enough evidence to support needing a third shot.Pfizer pushes for US booster shots as WHO says greed is driving vaccine disparitiesRead more“It was an interesting meeting. They shared their data. There wasn’t anything resembling a decision,” Fauci said in a Monday evening interview with the New York Times. “This is just one piece of a much bigger puzzle, and it’s one part of the data, so there isn’t a question of a convincing case one way or the other.”In the US, almost half of the population is fully vaccinated, while a little over half has received one dose, according to data from the Mayo Clinic. Still, vaccination rates lag in huge swaths of the country, giving the virus more opportunities for community outbreaks.Pfizer’s experts have pointed to Israel, where the government has decided to give a third Pfizer vaccine shot to vulnerable adults. But leaders from the World Health Organization and other organizations have pushed back, highlighting the vast lack of access and inequality in global vaccine distribution. More than 3.4 billion people have been vaccinated worldwide, but some countries, such as India, have rates as low as 5%.The debate over booster shots is the latest in the many public health decisions the Biden administration has faced since January. With the country largely relaxing Covid-19 rules and opening the economy, the path forward continues to be difficult, with emerging science being incorporated in real time.In next steps, Pfizer says it will submit more evidence to the government. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, meanwhile, will further study breakthrough infections – which happen when people who are vaccinated contract Covid-19.TopicsPfizerCoronavirusPharmaceuticals industryVaccines and immunisationUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      AstraZeneca’s boss is a boardroom superstar but a potential £2m cherry is pushing the point

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      A majority is a majority, but a rebellion of 40% against an executive pay policy is too large to be pinned solely on those brain-dead fund managers who outsource their thinking to proxy voting agencies.At AstraZeneca some serious institutions, with Aviva Investors and Standard Life Aberdeen to the fore, clearly thought the company was pushing things too far by adding a potential £2m cherry on top of their chief executive, Pascal Soriot’s, already substantial pay package. The rebels had a point.Yes, Soriot is a boardroom superstar thanks to AstraZeneca’s success in supercharging the development and production of the Oxford University vaccine for no profit. Communication with regulators went awry at times, and Soriot himself obviously wasn’t getting his hands dirty in the labs. But the boss, even when operating from Australia, is doing an excellent job of standing up to irritating and ungrateful EU commissioners, which is also part of the pandemic operation. And, amid it all, the company didn’t miss a beat on its day job and had time to spend $39bn buying the rare disease specialist Alexion, which looks a promising deal.Yet exceptional effort in an exceptional year is roughly what one expects from a chief executive on Soriot’s pay package. In the last three years, his incentives have performed wonderfully and he has earned £13m, £15m and £15m, so is firmly established in the £1m-a-month category, which very few chief executives of FTSE 100 companies can say. Even for an international hero, it feels a decent whack.The company’s claim was that “the world drastically changed in the last 12 months, and so did AstraZeneca”, and thus adjustments should be made outside the normal three-yearly cycle for tweaking pay.That argument would have felt stronger if AstraZeneca was not already at the adventurous end by UK standards. Last year, Soriot earned 197 times the median pay among his workforce. And, critically, the new arrangement will take his variable pay – annual bonus plus long-term incentives – to 900% of his £1.33m salary. A few years ago 500% was regarded as high by FTSE 100 standards.That precedent-setting detail helps to explain why the rebellion was so strong. Those fund managers who care about controlling boardroom pay inflation saw the risk of knock-on effects elsewhere. Loyalty to Soriot probably swayed a few doubters and helped AstraZeneca prevail, but the company did not need to pick a fight at this time – it gave Soriot a chunky rise a year ago.Some real pay shockers (think Cineworld) have slipped through in recent months. If the wider message in the AstraZeneca vote is that fund managers are not all asleep, that would be no bad thing.Seatbelts on for more stock market turbulenceLast Friday investors preferred to see a silver lining in a weak set of US unemployment numbers – only 266,000 jobs created in the month of April, against forecasts of 1m. If a lack of new jobs implied no inflationary wage pressures in the US economy, at least the stock market could take a few days off from worrying about rises in interest rates, ran the theory.Inflationary pressures, though, come in many forms, and here is a piece of data that spooked the stock market on Tuesday: China’s producer prices index rose at an annual rate of 6.8% in April, up from 4.4% in March.That is the highest level for three years and a sign, probably, that the boom in prices of raw copper, iron ore and other raw materials is finally feeding through to goods. The FTSE 100 index fell 175 points, or 2.5%, following other stock markets down.The benign view says a flurry of higher prices is almost to be expected as the global economy reopens. In that case, central banks’ mistake would be to move too early and choke off recovery. Yet it is clearly also possible that we could be at the start of a big move on prices, with the next leg delivered by the Biden’s administration’s huge infrastructure programme. If so, the mistake would be to delay rate rises.Do not expect quick or clear answers. Inflation data can give mixed messages for months. Do, though, anticipate more bumpy days for stock markets. Investors’ default assumption is to assume the US Federal Reserve will play nicely and look through the short-term signals. Life could quickly get ugly if there is any deviation from that assumed path. More