by Robert Reich
It wasn’t enough for Pfizer to desert America in order to slash its U.S. tax bill. Now Pfizer is raising U.S. prices on more than 100 of its drugs, many by as much as 20 percent, according to statistics compiled by global information services company Wolters Kluwer. Pfizer is hiking its drug to control epileptic seizures, Dilantin, by 20 percent, for example. I’ve been taking Dilantin since the late 1980s, when I had seizures. I can afford the price increase and I have good health insurance that can absorb much of it. But what about everyone else who needs it? And all the people who will be paying 20 percent more for Pfizer’s antibiotic drug Tygacil, and its angina drug Nitrostat, and its drug for irregular heartbeat Tykosyn? Pfizer is even raising the price of its breast-cancer drug Ibrance, which now costs $9,850 per month.
Pfizer says it needs to raise prices -- and also move to Ireland to cut its taxes -- because it needs more money to do research on new drugs. Baloney. Last year, Pfizer raked in $45.7 billion. It
spent only $8.4 billion on research and development, but spent $14.1 billion on marketing and advertising, and nearly $12 billion to buy back its shares and pump up its share price, and to pay dividends to shareholders. Its CEO, Ian Read, raked in over $18 million.
What can we do? At the least, the U.S. government should (1) use the full bargaining power of Medicare to reduce Pfizer's drug prices, (2) stop giving Pfizer a free ride off tax-payer financed research of the National Institutes of Health, (3) stop threatening China with sanctions for pirating Pfizer’s drugs, and (4) stop allowing Pfizer to make giant campaign donations. In the last election it ponied up $2,217,066 to candidates (by contrast, its major competitor Johnson & Johnson spent $755,000). So far in the 2016 election cycle, it’s been one of the top ten corporate donors.
What do you think?
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