Big pharma companies continue to exploit their customers, resulting in skyrocketing prices.
Meller and Ahmed ’19 (Abbey Meller and Hauwa Ahmed, “How Big Pharma Reaps Profits While Hurting Everyday Americans”, American Progress, Available online: https://www.americanprogress.org/article/big-pharma-reaps-profits-hurting-everyday-americans/#:~:text=But%20the%20issue%20goes%20beyond,skyrocketing%20price%20of%20the%20drug, 8-30-2019, Accessed 7-26-2024)//ILake
Billions of taxpayer dollars go into the creation and marketing of new drugs. The Los Angeles Times reports that, “Since the 1930s, the National Institutes of Health has invested close to $900 billion in the basic and applied research that formed both the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors.” Despite taxpayers’ crucial investment, U.S. consumers are increasingly paying more for their prescription drugs. A 2018 study on the National Institute of Health’s (NIH) financial contributions to new drug approvals found that the agency “contributed to published research associated with every one of the 210 new drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration from 2010–2016.” More than $100 billion in NIH funding went toward research that contributed directly or indirectly to the 210 drugs approved during that six-year period. The NIH Research Project Grant (R01)—which supports health-related research—was by far the most common kind of grant used to fund the science that supported the new drugs. In all, NIH gave out nearly 118,000 R01 grants related to those drugs from 2010 to 2016.