Patents trigger skyrocketing health care prices, affecting 1 in 4 Americans

[Tahir Amin and David Mitchell, 2-24-23, Amin is the Co-Founder and Co-Executive Director of Initiative for Medicines, Access & Knowledge (I-MAK). Mitchell is a cancer patient and Founder of Patients for Affordable Drugs, TIME, “Big Pharma’s Patent Abuses Are Fueling the Drug Pricing Crisis,” , accessed: 07-08-24, ES]

Today, 1 in 4 Americans cannot afford to take their medications as prescribed. Too many seniors are having to ration their treatments to get by until their next social security check arrives. And contrary to what industry lobbyists argue, soaring drug prices are not the inevitable result of research and development costs to bring breakthrough drugs to market. It’s time to put this widely debunked excuse to bed.

At the root of our nation’s drug pricing crisis is the industry’s egregious abuse of a broken drug patent system. The U.S. patent system was originally designed to promote ingenuity and groundbreaking inventions by granting creators a limited monopoly period. When the system works as the Constitution intended, both industry and consumers benefit. Yet, somewhere along the way, drugmakers began manipulating the process to secure patents for simple tweaks to existing medicines, such as changing the way a drug is delivered or flavored. Big Pharma uses the patent system not to reward invention, but to block competition and extend lucrative monopolies.

This isn’t invention—it’s legal gamesmanship designed to bend and distort the rules to put profits ahead of patients. Drugmakers have realized it’s far easier to extend patent monopolies on existing drugs to stem losses from expiring patents than it is to invest in and invent groundbreaking new treatments to save lives. For decades, drug companies have been given carte blanche to systemically game the system by quietly obtaining patent after frivolous patent—often referred to as “patent thickets”—on many blockbuster drugs. This wily maneuvering allows them to extend their monopolies far beyond the 20 years of patent protection intended by law and block lower-priced competitors from entering the market. It also gives them the power to extract multimillion-dollar settlements in litigation from companies with would-be generic or biosimilar products.