In Line with Trump’s Plan, Big Pharma Insists on Hiking Drug Prices Abroad – What a Shock.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — High drug prices in the U.S. are a result of pharmaceutical companies’ price gouging, despite false rhetoric from Big Pharma and President Trump that blames other countries, according to a new Public Citizen fact sheet.
President Trump recently unveiled plans to work to raise prices abroad, claiming drug prices are high in the U.S. because policies in other countries “suppress” prices below “fair market value” and “forc[e] American patients to pay for a disproportionate amount of global pharmaceutical research and development. Pfizer CEO and PhRMA Chair Albert Bourla recently took advantage of Trump’s rhetoric, saying the U.S. “never stood up” to other countries, ignoring frequent use of U.S. trade policy to lengthen pharma monopolies abroad.
In contrast to countries that regulate prices, the U.S. enables price gouging through limited checks on pricing or abusive patenting practices that stave off competition needed to bring down prices. Driven by expensive patented medicines, drug spending in the U.S. has increased astronomically over the last 20 years. In 2023, the U.S. spent nearly $450 billion on retail prescription drugs—an increase of over 150% compared to 2003.
Public Citizen Access to Medicines Director Peter Maybarduk said both Trump and Bourla are outrageously wrong – hiking drug prices in other countries self-evidently will not generate lower U.S. drug prices.
“Raising drug prices anywhere is a terrible idea that leads to suffering and treatment rationing,” Maybarduk said. “Big Pharma has a long, grotesque and deadly history of applying pressure to raise global prices, to no benefit other than its own profits, for no reason other than the transparent greed that has made the industry reviled worldwide.”