National Nurses United

J U LY | A U G U S T | S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 6 W W W . N A T I O N A L N U R S E S U N I T E D . O R G N A T I O N A L N U R S E 7 NATIONAL T his fall, the research arm of the California Nurses Association/ National Nurses Organizing Committee, the Institute for Health and Socioeconomic Policy, published a series of nine scathing reports revealing in detail the outrageously prof- itable but economically, politically, and morally questionable practices of the phar- maceutical industry. The reports explain every aspect of how the pharmaceutical industry manipulates the United States drug market to ensure that we pay the highest prices in the world for the same exact drugs and to prevent U.S. programs such as Medicare from negotiating drug prices as most other healthcare programs around the world already do. As a result, patients suffer, and by some estimates, as many as one in five American patients do not even fill their prescriptions due to unafford- able drug prices. The reports catalog the drug industry's astro- nomical profits; explain how companies manipulate the patent process to keep monopoly prices on drugs; show how they use lobbying and campaign dollars to keep lawmakers subservient to pharma; docu- ment pharma CEOs' and exec- utives' lavish compensation packages; uncover how Big Pharma has funneled money to patient groups to speak out against drug pricing regulation measures; chronicles the ever-increasing corporate consolidation of the drug industry and why it's bad for patients; debunks pharma's excuse that it needs high profits to fund research and development; and finally explains how pharma manipulates finan- cial markets through techniques such as stock buybacks to increase short-term shareholder value over the long-term health of the company and the public. For example, in the report "The R&D Smokescreen," IHSP shows how drug giants actually spend far more of their enormous wealth on marketing and sales than they do on research and development (R&D), a portion of which is actually funded by taxpayers. Re searchers found nearly two thirds of the 100 biggest pharmaceutical corporations spent at least twice as much on marketing as they did on R&D, 43 spent five times as much, and 27 spent 10 times as much on marketing than on R&D. Meanwhile, a number of the drug giants are actually cutting R&D spending while rapidly escalating spending on marketing, especially in direct-to-consumer advertising and direct payments to physicians to encourage them to prescribe the drug firms' high-priced drugs. "As nurses, we see families who can't afford the medications they or their children need, or they have to give up other basic necessities," wrote Malinda Markowitz, RN and Dahlia Tayag, RN in an opinion piece supporting Proposition 61, a November 2016 California ballot initiative that would have attempted to rein in drug prices but did not pass after pharma went on a $120 million spending blitz to defeat it. "It's heartbreaking and it's unconscionable." To read the reports in detail, please visit www.nationalnursesunited.org/pages/research. —Staff report How Big Pharma maintains stranglehold on drug supply and prices New research reports detail all aspects of industry

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