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Quotes about Drug Prices from the world's top natural health / natural living authors

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"Expenditures for prescription drugs have been increasing seven times faster than the rate of inflation, but the 2003 legislation specifically prohibits the federal government from using its purchasing power to negotiate prices with drug makers, as is done successfully by the Veterans Health Administration and Defense Department (and by Canada and the European countries—which is why their drug prices are so much lower than those in the United States). The U.S." - John Abramson, Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine (P.S.) (Get the book.)

"The bill includes a remarkable provision that prohibits the federal government from using its purchasing power to negotiate reduced drug prices, something the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and the United States military have done for years. Consequently, under Medicare Part D taxpayers pay 58% more for drugs, on average, than the Veterans Administration, according to a study by Families USA. Families USA found, for example, that a year's supply of 200 milligram Celebrex caplets under Medicare Part D is $946.44, compared to the Veterans Administration price of $632." - Jonathan W. Emord, The Rise of Tyranny (Get the book.) "FDA protects inflated domestic drug prices from competition derived from the very same drugs sold at below U.S. market prices overseas. FDA also examines literature used to promote the sale of foods and dietary supplements to see if that literature includes an express or implied claim that the product treats or prevents disease." - Jonathan W. Emord, The Rise of Tyranny (Get the book.)

"The focus of the AARP lobby is to get the government to pay more for drugs for 76 Kathy Jones, "Drug Prices Increase Under Part D Plan," Families USA, June 21,2006 77 AARP, http://www.aarp.org/research/health/drugs/aresearch-import-656-DD77. html 78 http://www.aarp.org/research/health/drugs/aresearch-import-656-DD77.html the elderly and to encourage government oversight and control of drug pricing." - Kenneth W Thomas, Ron Gilbert, Gerd Schaller, Side Effects: The Hidden Agenda of the Pharmaceutical Drug Cartel (Get the book.) "AARP,72 an advocacy group for the elderly, issued a report that analyzed drug prices for 197 of the medications most often used by patients over 65 years of age. It found that there was an overall increase of 3.4% in the first three months of 2004. It confirmed the fact that the drug-price increases are out pacing inflation by more than two-fold. Even the rate of increase is increasing. The rate of increase for 2003 was 6.9%. This increase in profits is extraordinary considering that there was actually a drop in inflation during 2002 and only a slight increase in 2003." - Kenneth W Thomas, Ron Gilbert, Gerd Schaller, Side Effects: The Hidden Agenda of the Pharmaceutical Drug Cartel (Get the book.)

"Why are prescription drug prices rising four times faster than inflation? Why does the FDA enforce a drug market monopoly by insisting that Americans should not be able to buy the exact same drugs from Canada or other countries? Why do Big Pharma CEOs take home tens of millions of dollars in salaries each year, even while our nation's elderly are so financially burdened by prescription drug prices that they sometimes have to choose between food and medicine?" - Mike Adams, Natural Health Solutions (Get the book.)

"None of Kefauver's proposals aimed at reducing drug prices was left in the bill, but the new law greatly strengthened the FDA's control over the marketing and promotion of prescription drugs. It also required the companies once again to focus on good science. Under the new law, the companies were required to perform careful clinical trials that proved not only that a medicine was safe but that it was effective for its intended use. At the same time, doctors and scientists performing the trials had to show they were qualified to do the work." - Melody Petersen, Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs (Get the book.) "With no limits on drug prices in America, the companies have simply raised their prices to cover the penalties. Congress must change the law so that pharmaceutical crimes result in harsh penalties for the executives who plan and direct them. Executives should face prison time if they are found to have ordered their employees to engage in illegal practices that put patients' lives at risk. Spend less money on pills and more on keeping people from getting sick in the first place." - Melody Petersen, Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs (Get the book.)

"A Kaiser Family Foundation poll in 2005 found the public is not pleased with overall rise in drug prices. [Journal National Cancer Institute 97: 624-25, 2005] The public wants more regulation of drug prices, but the politicians are completely bought off in Washington by the pharmaceutical companies. But when the failures of the cancer care industry are brought to the public's attention, the cry for more research funds is heard. The quoted figure is that only $30 billion has been spent in the war against cancer since 1971. However, the real figures are somewhat different." - Bill Sardi, You Don't Have to be Afraid of Cancer Anymore (Get the book.)

"In a post-script to his story, Kroft explained that in January 2007 Democratic members of Congress endeavored to amend Medicare Part D to require negotiation of drug prices but the measure "was blocked in the Senate, due in part to the efforts of the drug lobby."65 The readily apparent pharmaceutical industry capture of the FDA and Congress is in macrocosm what occurs daily in microcosm at every federal agency and commission through the machinations of principal regulatees." - Jonathan W. Emord, The Rise of Tyranny (Get the book.)

"We have been scrutinizing drug prices carefully for 30 years. When we began this journey we were unabashedly pro-generics. We were swimming against the tide. The overwhelming majority of prescriptions filled in American pharmacies were for brand-name products. In those days, pharmacists and physicians frequently defended branded drugs as being superior in quality and worth every extra dime because they represented an investment in future pharmaceutical development. We were chastised for promoting generics, but we thought they represented a great deal for consumers." - Joe Graedon, M.S. and Teresa Graedon, Ph.D., Best Choices From the People's Pharmacy (Get the book.)

"There were stories of the elderly signing up in droves for special bus tours to Canada or Mexico to benefit from their state-controlled drug prices. People were interviewed to explain how high-dose pills (often costing only fractionally more than the low-doses) could be chopped up into daily portions. Then there was evidence that people were getting drugs via the Internet, benefiting from other countries' cheap prices, thus circumventing the domestic systems that keep US prices high - but also putting them at risk of falling into the traps of growing numbers of counterfeiters." - Jacky Law, Big Pharma: Exposing the Global Healthcare Agenda (Get the book.) "A whole string of class-action lawsuits alleging that HMOs withheld medical services to boost profits expressed some of the mounting anget over healthcare costs in general and drug prices in particular Insurers, via HMOs, also started contesting FDA decisions about safe, widely used drugs which they thought patients should pay for themselves in pharmacies rather than have prescribed at the insurers' expense." - Jacky Law, Big Pharma: Exposing the Global Healthcare Agenda (Get the book.) "The second and more significant reason is that there is a specific clause in the law that forbids the Department of Health and Human Services from negotiating drug prices. The US government must pay what pharma charges, in other words, a situation that is unique in the world. Tauzin was a fairly natural choice to represent pharma interests in these difficult times, and his appointment shows the importance of friends in pharma politics. The latest law is something of a political masterstroke because it gives patients what they want, which is free drugs." - Jacky Law, Big Pharma: Exposing the Global Healthcare Agenda (Get the book.) "The desperate race to develop non-invasive insulin is another example of how market forces work to create products that, while valuable, have the same limit on development costs as society has over drug prices. The market for insulin products is predicted to be worth $20 billion in 2006. According to the International Diabetes Federation, nearly 200 million people around the world are already dependent on insulin. The World Health Organization believes this figure will reach 300 million by 2025." - Jacky Law, Big Pharma: Exposing the Global Healthcare Agenda (Get the book.)

"And while advertising drug prices was legal, advertising specific drugs and their specific therapeutic benefits was a tricky matter, with the FDA exercising special regulatory powers that required lengthy, often off-putting safety information that would make the ads both ineffective and, especially on TV, expensive. Then the pair had a brainstorm. What if they advertised not the therapeutic effect of Seldane — that it helped you get un-clogged — but instead that "a new drug for allergies is out" and that "it does not make you drowsy"?" - Greg Critser, Generation Rx: How Prescription Drugs are Altering American Lives, Minds, and Bodies (Get the book.) "It was true that there was a "slight" antitrust issue in Merck owning the company: Medco's first allegiance, at least in negotiations over drug prices, was not, in theory and in law, to Merck. It was to the customer. Just prior to Merck's acquisition, for example, Medco was urging doctors to shift from Merck's Mevacor to Squibb's Pravachol, for price reasons. But Gilmartin did not see complexities and problems as much as he saw synergies and opportunities." - Greg Critser, Generation Rx: How Prescription Drugs are Altering American Lives, Minds, and Bodies (Get the book.) "They were a big reason drug prices were so high in the United States. The new Medicare bill held the prospect of the United States going the same way. Holmer, channeling his members' worst nightmares, hated the notion with a passion, and promptly put it in the center of his lobbying campaign. After a lengthy series of bills, amendments, House-Senate conferences, and rewrites, he and his allies, notably the AARP, prevailed. In December 2003, the Medicare Prescription Drug Act became law. In it, governmental price wrangling was not just dropped, it was expressly banned." - Greg Critser, Generation Rx: How Prescription Drugs are Altering American Lives, Minds, and Bodies (Get the book.)

"He has also been vocal in criticizing Canada, Germany, and other countries for providing their citizens with controlled drug prices. Such criticism does not bode well for his vision for American citizens. Whose interest is served by not controlling the cost of drugs? Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters. - Albert Einstein Most Americans, including many doctors, believe when a drug hits the marketplace with the FDA seal of approval, the product meets a standard of safety and effectiveness." - Brent Hoadley, Ph.D., Too Profitable to Cure (Get the book.) "Drug prices are kept high, often out of reach for poorer countries or uninsured Americans. U.S. patients are charged the highest prices, but U.S. pharmaceuticals attempt to maintain equivalent prices worldwide. And with the phenomenal profits they generate, U.S. pharmaceuticals are lobbying to prevent importation of foreign drugs or re-importation of U.S. drugs. If they used the money they spend purchasing power and preference, they could actually lower prices for American consumers. However, such erosion of their power is unacceptable." - Brent Hoadley, Ph.D., Too Profitable to Cure (Get the book.)

"In contrast to what drug company advertising claims, today's drug prices are actually funding research for tomorrow's profit-focused, patented chemicals. There is absolutely no sensible justification for the idea that Americans alone should subsidize the profits of pharmaceutical companies. The "cure carrot" dangled in front of U.S. lawmakers and consumers is little more than a clever marketing gimmick—a trick designed to distract people from the very real fact that they are getting ripped off by drug company profiteering." - Mike Adams, Natural Health Solutions (Get the book.)

"Their peephole was the Medicare Prescription Drug Act, which the industry was able to rewrite to forbid the federal government from negotiating for lower drug prices — something citizens of every other industrialized democracy (and many undeveloped ones as well) take for granted. That the congressman who shepherded the bill is now the $2-miUion-a-year president of Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the industry's big lobbying group, takes no one by surprise. The new pharma money also encourages regulatory permissiveness, both here and abroad." - Greg Critser, Generation Rx: How Prescription Drugs are Altering American Lives, Minds, and Bodies (Get the book.)

"Even while they're always whining about how they need these high drug prices to fund the research and development programs for their drugs, the truth is that much of this research is done at universities and paid for by taxpayers. Far more money is actually spent on marketing and promotion than is spent on research and development. Those marketing dollars are spent either on bribing doctors or on media whoring companies; which includes, by the way, practically every magazine on the newsstand, practically every broadcast show or cable station and practically every newspaper in the country." - Mike Adams, Spam Filters for Your Brain (Get the book.)

"She also points out that the top Bush health care policy adviser, Deborah Steelman, who argued against any regulation of drug prices, had also represented a number of major drug companies and their professional association, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. (conf.) Using all these devices, directors are able to avoid any personal or corporate litigation that might find them or their companies responsible for manslaughter, murder or human rights violations." - Martin J. Walker, HRT Licensed to Kill and Maim: The Unheard Voices of Women Damaged by Hormone Replacement Therapy (Get the book.)

"Journal National Cancer Institute 97: 624-25, 2005] The public wants more regulation of drug prices, but the politicians are completely bought off in Washington by the pharmaceutical companies. But when the failures of the cancer care industry are brought to the public's attention, the cry for more research funds is heard. The quoted figure is that only $30 billion has been spent in the war against cancer since 1971. However, the real figures are somewhat different." - Bill Sardi, You Don't Have to be Afraid of Cancer Anymore (Get the book.)

"We know that according to the HHS report drug prices in Europe are about 50 percent lower than in the United States. We also know that European drugs are traded profitably from one European country to the other when the price differential is just 10 percent, so let's assume that we get a 40 percent discount. Then we take the report's premise that imported drugs may be around 12 percent of total use and compare that with what is going on in Europe. In the U.K. for instance, imported drugs account for 17.6 percent of pharmaceutical sales. Since the U.S." - Peter Rost, The Whistleblower: Confessions of a Healthcare Hitman (Get the book.) "It is important because reimportation has a major impact on drug prices and a lot of people can't afford life-saving drugs today. They don't take them, the drugs don't work. When drugs don't work, people die." Then I said, "I believe we have to speak out for the people who can't afford drugs, in favor of free trade and against a closed market." The WHO has the numbers that prove our failure: Americans have shorter life expectancies, higher infant-mortality rates, and higher child-mortality rates than virtually all countries in Western Europe." - Peter Rost, The Whistleblower: Confessions of a Healthcare Hitman (Get the book.) "At the same time, the pharmaceutical industry spends over $100 million on lobbying activities to stop lower drug prices, according to the Center for Public Integrity. There are 1,274 registered pharmaceutical lobbyists in Washington, DC. During the 2004 election cycle, the drug industry contributed $1 million to President Bush.26 For an industry that makes $500 billion on a global basis, spending 1 million on a president or $100 million on lobbying is pocket change.27 This money was well spent. It stopped legalized import of cheaper drugs and bought the U.S. a new Medicare drug program." - Peter Rost, The Whistleblower: Confessions of a Healthcare Hitman (Get the book.) "In a small way I had been able to do this when I was working overseas and lowered drug prices. Then it hit me—I didn't really have anything holding me back from speaking the truth already today. Perhaps the fact that I was now a vice president at a major pharmaceutical company would give me the credibility to step forward; perhaps I didn't have to wait for a more senior position that might never materialize. I decided to dip my toe in the water. I figured if this was my destiny, if this was meant to be, then a short book review on amazon.com might lead to an avalanche." - Peter Rost, The Whistleblower: Confessions of a Healthcare Hitman (Get the book.)

"Something many seniors have continued doing, due to their overly stretched budgets, and our highly inflated drug prices, just to help make ends meet. Guess what many soon began receiving in the mail, instead of their medications? Not only had the drugs they ordered and paid for been confiscated, but they also received notice from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, stating that they were violating federal law! What could seniors, attempting to save money on their medications, possibly have to do with our security? Obviously, nothing! The "only thing" they are protecting is the U.S." - Dr David W Tanton, Ph.D., Antidepressants, Antipsychotics, And Stimulants - Dangerous Drugs on Trial (Get the book.)

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