Economist Dean Baker: Systemic Change Needed to Fight Big Pharma Price Gouging

“We give companies patent monopolies that allow them to sell drugs at mark-ups of several thousand percent above their production costs. How can we be surprised when they lie or conceal information to push their drugs as widely as possible?”

Alan Macleod
By Alan Macleod
Gilead Lawsuit Feature Photo

Imagine there was a miracle drug that prevented HIV infections, but a huge corporation held back its release in order to squeeze billions out of the sick, dying and suffering. It is evil on the scale of comic book villains, a crime Bonnie and Clyde would balk at. That is exactly what pharmaceutical giant Gilead Sciences is accused of doing in a new

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Trump’s Promise to Cut Drug Prices Turns Into Another Ploy to Enrich Industry, Blame Foreigners

He calls it “American patients first,” and takes aim at what he calls “foreign freeloading.”

Robert Reich
By Robert Reich
President Donald Trump speaks during an event about prescription drug prices with Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, Friday, May 11, 2018. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Trump promised to rein in drug prices. It was his only sensible campaign promise. But the plan he announced Friday does little but add another battering ram to his ongoing economic war against America’s allies. He calls it “American patients first,” and takes aim at what he calls “foreign freeloading.” The plan will pressure foreign countries

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Big Pharma’s Azar to Head HHS: Trump Finds Another Fox to Guard Swamp’s Chicken Coops

President Trump has made much, in public, of his zeal for lowering the “out of control” drug prices in the U.S. market. Choosing former Eli Lilly top exec Alex Azar to replace the disgraced Tom Price as Secretary of Health and Human Services will all but guarantee that doesn’t happen.

Whitney Webb
By Whitney Webb
Deputy Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar meets reporters at the HHS Department in Washington, Thursday, June 8, 2006. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Since the begging of October, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has been without an official secretary following the ouster of Tom Price, who resigned due to public outrage over his extensive and costly travel on private jets for government business and his personal use. However, the department – tasked with regulating the

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