Pfizer Cannot Hold Prescription Drugs Hostage from European Nations, Must Take Accountability for High Prices
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, Public Citizen sent a letter demanding Pfizer commit to making its medicines reliably accessible everywhere after its CEO, Albert Bourla, told reporters that the company may stop supplying drugs to France if it, and other similar European nations, refuse to pay more for Pfizer medicines.
Bourla’s remarks were in response to the Trump Administration’s “most-favored nation” drug pricing policy, which Public Citizen and others say is unlikely to provide significant relief from high drug prices.
The letter states that Bourla’s “outrageous statement … blithely disregards Pfizer’s duty to patients,” and calls on Bourla to retract his threat and pledge to not withdraw drugs from,or delay launches in, other countries.
“Americans pay far too much for drugs. But that is not France’s fault, or responsibility. It is yours,” wrote Public Citizen’s Access to Medicines Director Peter Maybarduk to Albert Bourla. “Americans aren’t going bankrupt from their cancer treatment because Europeans are getting the same treatment for less. They are going broke so you can receive your $24.6 million pay package, and they are going broke so you can enrich shareholders with billions in dividends and stock buybacks…. The drug industry can afford to sell its medicines to Americans for less, without harming people in other countries and without harming innovation.”
If Pfizer or other drugmakers continue to threaten access, the letter notes that “every country has the option to overcome your patent monopoly and authorize generic alternatives to any product you delay or fail to launch, through compulsory licensing. We will encourage countries to act.”