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Vital Medicine Prices Skyrocket Despite Trump Promises to the Contrary

Sept. 24, 2018

Vital Medicine Prices Skyrocket Despite Trump Promises to the Contrary

Statement of Peter Maybarduk, Director, Public Citizen’s Global Access to Medicines Program

Note: A recent Associated Press study shows that Big Pharma is making access to vital medicines less affordable for Americans. In May 2018, President Donald Trump announced that corporations would soon be enacting voluntary price decreases on medicines. AP’s analysis, however, shows that in the two months after Trump’s announcement, there were more than 16 increases for every decrease.

President Trump’s Rx is nothing more than a placebo.

The president’s remedy has given us newly emboldened corporations that know this administration will protect them from real change that lowers costs for customers.

The apparent complexity of the administration’s blueprint on medicine pricing masks its core purpose: to help Big Pharma endure a public relations and public health crisis without changing its flawed and monopolistic business model.

Real change will come when our government empowers Medicare to negotiate directly for affordable medicine, blocks corporations’ annual price spiking and curbs the patent and monopoly abuses of Big Pharma.

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