Safe and Affordable Prescription Drugs
Pharmaceutical companies make important life-saving medicines. But that
shouldn't give them license to drive up drug prices, ignore the risks
of harmful side-effects, or block needed reforms in Congress and the
states. Consider:
• Pharmaceutical companies use
direct-to-consumer ads to sell their latest, most expensive drugs. The
industry claims that these ads help to educate consumers, but a Florida
PIRG analysis of FDA records for the years 2001 to 2005 found that the
ads for 150 different drugs were false or misleading.
• Merck,
the manufacturer of Vioxx, continued to market its painkiller to
doctors and patients years after the company had substantial evidence
of increased the risk of heart problems. FDA researchers estimate that,
in less than 5 years, Vioxx may have caused as many as 139,000 heart
attacks and strokes.
• The industry continues to use
unscrupulous marketing techniques to influence prescriptions that
doctors write, including fancy meals, travel junkets and money—in the
form of “consultant” fees.
• More than 3 million seniors are
falling into the doughnut hole—Medicare’s prescription drug coverage
gap. Seniors have to keep paying their monthly premiums, but Medicare
does not pay for their drugs until seniors pay $3,600 in out-of-pocket
expenses for their medicines. When Congress created the Medicare
prescription drug benefit, the pharmaceutical industry and its
lobbyists inserted a provision that prohibits the program from
negotiating bulk-rate discounts for drugs.
Florida PIRG is
working to require drug companies to fully disclose studies and
information about the safety and effectiveness of their drugs, to
enable the FDA to better crack down on misleading drug advertisements,
to rein in inappropriate gifts to doctors, and to allow Congress to
negotiate drug discounts for the Medicare program.
