A new report by @sanders.senate.gov found that drug companies that signed drug pricing deals with President Trump have raised the cost of hundreds of medications and launched new ones at an average price of $353,000 a year.
✍️ Berkeley Lovelace Jr., @nbcnews.com
www.nbcnews.com/health/healt...
Medicare’s drug price negotiation program is a necessary and important step to help curb high drug prices, but if we do not also address patent reform, Medicare will continue negotiating “monopoly discounts” on drugs that shouldn’t have monopoly prices in the first place.
This gap is an indication that even when negotiations work, they cannot compensate for what our patent system is allowing: drug companies extending their monopolies long after primary patents expire.
That's a big win for Medicare and its beneficiaries. But shockingly, Medicare’s negotiated price is still nearly 6x what patients pay in countries with generic competition.
In 2024, Medicare spent $2.1b on Pomalyst, a cancer drug marketed by Bristol Myers Squibb, to treat just 14,324 beneficiaries. Due to this high spend, Medicare added Pomalyst to its 2nd round of drug price negotiations & successfully lowered the price of a 30-day supply from $21,744 to $8,650.🧵
The #CancerCalculus explores how Merck, known as MSD outside the U.S. and Canada, employed aggressive but legal tactics to increase its blockbuster cancer drug Keytruda revenues and make it one of the bestselling ever — at the expense of some patients. bit.ly/4coEq2m
A team of journalists at the @icij.org and 47 media partners in 37 countries just published a yearlong investigation into how Merck built its global Keytruda monopoly.
Public Citizen’s Peter Maybarduk told ICIJ that pharma created a system of rules to protect drugmakers and ensure wealthy governments protect them “There is a whole architecture underpinning Keytruda and every patented drug where the US government and Europe go to bat for the industry and its rules”
💊 En Suisse, le médicament anticancéreux #Keytruda a permis au géant pharmaceutique MSD de réaliser un chiffre d'affaires de 31,7 milliards de dollars en 2025. Notre enquête conjointe avec @icij.org montre comment MSD fait du « patent evergreening »➡️ www.publiceye.ch/fr/keytruda
Thank you @tahiramin.bsky.social @imakglobal.bsky.social for supporting @fr.publiceye.ch in our patent analysis of cancer drug #Keytruda, in conjunction with @icij.org, unveiling MSD's gaming of the patent systems to maintain overinflated prices & delay competition www.publiceye.ch/en/topics/ph...
NEW: My news organization @icij.org has released results our latest investigation, revealing how pharmaceutical giant Merck keeps the price of its lifesaving cancer drug Keytruda sky-high, locking out patients & squeezing health care systems worldwide. #CancerCalculus www.icij.org/investigatio...
An excellent thread about Merck’s Keytruda cancer drug —and the @icij.org-led #CancerCalculus investigation:
This is a comprehensive investigation of patent abuse of a Keytruda & the best I've ever seen patent data visualisation of evergreening practices and the resulting thicket until 2046 - another extra twenty years of patent monopoly right
h/t @clancyny.bsky.social
#CancerCalculus: An ICIJ-led collaboration with 47 media partners in 37 countries reveals how Merck & Co. keeps the price of its lifesaving cancer drug Keytruda sky-high, locking out patients and squeezing health care systems worldwide. www.icij.org/investigatio...
How Merck keeps prices for its blockbuster cancer drug sky high Keytruda
✍️ @usatoday.com
www.usatoday.com/story/money/...
Our team at @imakglobal.bsky.social released a new brief, The Monopoly Extension Menu.🧵 reports.i-mak.org/monopoly-ext...
The prices remain high because the companies behind the drugs used legal and regulatory maneuvers including patent thicketing, formulation switches, and device patents to block competition that should have arrived long ago.
This exorbitant cost is not from breakthroughs; one drug was approved by the FDA in 2020 and two have been on the market for over a decade.
The three drugs—Pomalyst, Darzalex, and Trelegy Ellipta—account for $9.9 billion in annual Medicare spending.
NEW: Our new brief, The Monopoly Extension Menu, examines three of the most expensive drugs in the Medicare program to show how pharmaceutical companies extend monopolies using a menu of schemes to block competition.
📑 reports.i-mak.org/monopoly-ext...
A national survey we commissioned last year found that 90% of Americans support making it easier for generic drugs to reach the market and 80% support changing patent laws to address drug pricing.
reports.i-mak.org/drug-pricing...
Some of these concerns can be abated if legislators take on the drug pricing crisis by reforming the patent system.
According to a new poll by KFF, Americans are more worried about being able to afford health care than they are about utilities, food and groceries, housing, or gas. Health care costs will affect how they vote in the midterms.
www.washingtonpost.com/health/2026/...
Legislators must defend Medicare’s Drug Price Negotiation Program without handing the pharmaceutical industry even more power to price gouge seniors and the private market. Failure to do so will only embolden the industry to continue attacking the program.
With the EPIC Act, he is attempting to weaken the Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program by delaying price negotiation for small-molecule drugs from 9 to 13 years — another epic giveaway to the pharmaceutical industry.
🔗 www.arnoldventures.org/stories/pres...
Tillis is a top recipient of pharma campaign donations and has pushed several industry-backed bills over the years, including the PREVAIL Act and PERA.
🔗 prospect.org/2024/03/29/2...
Following President Trump's 2025 Executive Order, which asks Congress to extend the Medicare negotiation timeline for small molecule drugs i.e. pills and tablets, Senator Thom Tillis introduced the deceptively titled “EPIC Act”.
🔗 www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...
CMS is still deciding whether these modified versions will be open to Medicare negotiations next year or be protected for another 13 years. The pharmaceutical industry will be lobbying hard for the latter outcome.
🔗 www.cnbc.com/2025/05/14/h...
🔗 www.cms.gov/files/docume...
