“BIG PHARMA” LIES

TRUTH

Drug companies charge high prices because of their high research, development, and production costs.

Drug companies charge high prices so they can deliver sky-high profits to Wall Street investors, and because of their huge marketing and advertising budgets.

Drug companies make large profits to pay for their research and development of new drugs for serious illnesses.

Drug companies spend twice as much on marketing and advertising than on research.  Their large profits are made after they have already paid their research costs.  Much new drug research is actually paid for by our taxes.

Lawmakers cannot agree on drug legislation because of partisan politics.

Big Pharma itself blocks needed drug legislation with its huge army of lying lobbyists, phony consumer front groups, and campaign contributions to buy-off candidates.

HMOs, private insurers, and drug company discount cards will make drugs affordable for people on Medicare.

Big Pharma pushes these schemes to keep Medicare from negotiating lower drug prices, to protect huge profits.

Drug companies need long patents on brand name products to protect their research and development.

Big Pharma wants patents to keep generics off the market, so they can protect monopolies and price-gouge.

Lower-priced drugs imported from Canada can’t be trusted as safe.

Canadian drugs are the exact same safe drugs as those sold in the United States.

Drug companies can’t open their books because they must protect proprietary information about drug development.

Drug companies won’t open their books because they don’t want to reveal how much they have been lying.

Drug companies now offer cheap drugs to developing nations with severe public health crises like HIV/AIDS.

The discounts drug companies offer to these countries are not enough to address the severity of the crises they face.