by User_Name13
A far-reaching lawsuit filed Friday by the attorneys general of more than 40 states accused some of the nation’s largest generic drug manufacturers of conspiring to inflate prices, in some cases by over 1,000 percent.
“We have hard evidence that shows the generic drug industry perpetrated a multi-billion dollar fraud on the American people,” Connecticut Attorney General William Tong, whose state led the probe into the companies’ practices, said in a statement.
“Teva and its co-conspirators embarked on one of the most egregious and damaging price-fixing conspiracies in the history of the United States.” —Lawsuit
“We have emails, text messages, telephone records, and former company insiders that we believe will prove a multi-year conspiracy to fix prices and divide market share for huge numbers of generic drugs,” said Tong.
The suit names 20 major drug manufacturers—including Pfizer, Teva, Novartis, and Mylan—as well as more than a dozen senior executives, who the complaint accuses of deleting evidence after the states began their investigation in 2014.
“The industrywide scheme affected the prices of more than 100 generic drugs,” the New York Times reported Saturday, “including lamivudine-zidovudine, which treats H.I.V.; budesonide, an asthma medication; fenofibrate, which treats high cholesterol; amphetamine-dextroamphetamine for ADHD.; oral antibiotics; blood thinners; cancer drugs; contraceptives; and antidepressants.”
Americans pay far more for prescription drugs than the people of any other industrialized nation. Alluding to this fact, Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser—who joined the multi-state lawsuit—tweeted on Saturday: “If you are angry about rising drug prices, you should be. Particularly because a major cause of price increases is illegal collusion by generic drug companies.”
Bernie Sanders launched a Congressional probe into predatory drug prices and the rapacious pharmaceutical industry back in 2014.
As a result of the findings of that investigation, 44 states Attorney Generals are now suing Big Pharma titans like Novartis, Pfizer and Mylan, as well other large pharmaceutical corporations for what they are calling a multi-year conspiracy among the largest Big Pharma corporations to raise drug prices by 1,000% over a short number of years.
This effects everyone greatly.
My own Mom can never lose her job, because she has decent healthcare and she desperately needs good healthcare because she takes Xarelto, a very expensive medication that is manufactured by the Janssen corporation.
It’s criminal how much healthcare costs in this country and one day after we have Medicare for All or a similar Universal healthcare program implemented in this country, maybe we can start up criminal courts to prosecute the people responsible for killing so many Americans over the past couple decades with their predatory drug prices.
Also not for nothing, people can’t even afford Insulin in America in 2019.
Insulin.
Insulin was invented in 1921, it’s a 98-year old medicine, yet it has been made unaffordable by a criminally rapacious for profit pharmaceutical industry. All for the benefit of corporations like fucking Novartis.
It’s unbelievable how badly Americans are fucked over for their healthcare.
Drug prices don’t rise like this over the last 10 years without their being some sort of conspiracy behind the scenes with the major pharmaceutical corporations colluding and conspiring with one another to create a rigged market for products that people’s lives depend on.
It’s really sad that it took this long for state’s Attorney Generals to step up and go after these corporations. It’s a testament to the amount of power that Big Pharma and the healthcare lobby have over US lawmakers.
Hasan Minhaj did a very eye-opening episode of Patriot Act about predatory drug pricing in America a few months ago which does a great job illustrating the extent of how badly Americans are being fucked over here.