Despite major moves by President Donald Trump to fight them, Big Pharma has continued pushing hard to slash discounts and raise the already highest in the world prices Americans pay for medicine. And new federal numbers show who stands to lose big if they succeed: rural Americans battling cancer.
I mean… cancer! Cancer victims! It’s like a cartoon villain industry.
As you know, under the Republican-established drug discount program that costs taxpayers nothing, drugmakers have to sell drugs to rural hospitals and clinics at a discount if they want to rake in money from taxpayer-funded programs like Medicare and Medicaid. Which of course they do. And the latest purchasing data shows that some of the most heavily relied-upon discounted drugs under the program are cancer treatments, meaning hospitals serving rural communities would be among the hardest hit if the pharmaceutical industry’s lobbying campaign succeeds.
The new federal info shows that 28.6% of all discounted purchases by rural providers are concentrated in just ten drugs. Four of the ten drugs are blockbuster cancer treatments, led by Merck’s Keytruda alone at $8.89 billion.
But that’s not all. (Because of course not.) Also sitting at the top of the list are Gilead’s Biktarvy and Descovy, two of the country’s most widely used drugs to treat HIV/AIDS, which has spread like wildfire in rural communities struck by the opioid crisis. So in other words, if the drug discount program known as 340B went away, some of the most-relied on drugs in America that rural patients need to beat cancer and fight off the worst effects of the opioid crisis (that Big Pharma started in the first place) would go WAY up in price. All so the drug companies could make even more money by squeezing American health care providers and patients while pocketing tax dollars through Medicare and Medicaid.
Now, all of the companies who think rural America should have to spend even more on these drugs are members of PhRMA, the lobby trying to gut the discount program. You know who else was a proud PhRMA member? Purdue Pharma. Yes, that Purdue, the OxyContin people who lit the fuse on the opioid crisis. PhRMA never kicked them out. Purdue quietly walked away on its own in 2019, once the lawsuits piled up too high to ignore. Now, other PhRMA members want to destroy one of the main vehicles for cleaning up the mess that Purdue made– while charging everyone even more to beat cancer.
President Trump has been more than willing to call out Big Pharma. During his first administration, he set ceiling prices for drugs in the 340B program to prevent them ripping off voters and their health care providers. Even so, a Purdue-owned drugmaker got busted for overcharging for drugs in the program just last year. That’s not likely to sit well with Trump who has waged war on high drug prices, signed an executive order concerning drug addiction, and campaigned on combating the opioid crisis. Trump knows the damage addiction wreaks because of his own family’s experience with it, and he knows that and good access to cancer treatments matter for MAGA voters.
And yet none of that has stopped Big Pharma from waging war on this program, just like they go after RFK Jr. and anyone who opposed vaccine mandates, just like they go after anyone who opposes the industry pushing hormone treatments for transing kids, or objects to funding for abortion medication allowing Planned Parenthood to operate nationwide, flouting red state pro-life laws.
So next time (big) PhRMA claims the discount program for fighting cancer and other plagues is the problem, remember their track record, who they pal around with, and exactly which drugs they want to make it more expensive for hospitals in red America to buy.