{"id":1035573,"date":"2023-03-23T13:55:43","date_gmt":"2023-03-23T13:55:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jacobin.com\/2023\/03\/big-pharma-biden-becerra-drug-prices\/"},"modified":"2023-03-23T13:55:43","modified_gmt":"2023-03-23T13:55:43","slug":"the-biden-administration-is-letting-big-pharma-profiteer-off-a-cancer-drug","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2023\/03\/23\/the-biden-administration-is-letting-big-pharma-profiteer-off-a-cancer-drug\/","title":{"rendered":"The Biden Administration Is Letting Big Pharma Profiteer Off a Cancer Drug"},"content":{"rendered":"\n \n\n\n\n

Under existing law, Joe Biden and his health secretary have the power to lower the price of medicines developed with taxpayer funds. They\u2019re refusing to do so for the $180,000-a-year cancer drug Xtandi \u2014 after a furious lobbying campaign by Big Pharma.<\/h3>\n\n\n
\n \n
\n President Joe Biden delivers remarks at the White House Conservation In Action Summit at the US Interior Department on March 21, 2023, in Washington, DC. (Kevin Dietsch \/ Getty Images)\n <\/figcaption> \n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n \n

In the summer of 2020, then California attorney general Xavier Becerra demanded Donald Trump’s administration use existing law to lower the price of medicines that were originally developed at taxpayer expense.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe cannot afford to leave the supply of this critical medication to chance and the whims of the marketplace when it was funded in part by taxpayer dollars,\u201d Becerra\u00a0wrote<\/a>\u00a0in a letter to the Trump administration in response to the high price of Remdesivir, which treats COVID-19.<\/p>\n

Less than three years later, the agency run by Becerra \u2014 now Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary in the Biden administration \u2014 just rejected the same demand from two cancer patients unable to afford the $180,000-a-year price of a medicine whose development was originally funded by the public.<\/p>\n

Current\u00a0law<\/a>\u00a0allows regulators to rescind exclusive patent protections for government-developed drugs when \u201caction is necessary to alleviate health or safety needs\u201d or when a medicine is not \u201cavailable to the public on reasonable terms.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, in rejecting that move for the prostate drug Xtandi, the National Institutes of Health \u2014 which is part of HHS \u2014 declared<\/a>\u00a0that the purpose of existing law is designed \u201cto promote the commercialization and public availability of government-funded inventions,\u201d with a primary purpose \u201cto allow government funding recipients to own patent rights.\u201d<\/p>\n

Becerra\u2019s department sided with pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and Astellas, despite Astellas selling the prostate cancer medicine in other countries at a fraction of its price in the United States.<\/p>\n

The patent holders of Xtandi \u00a0\u2014 whose ingredients were\u00a0developed<\/a>\u00a0at a California public university \u2014 have\u00a0earned<\/a>\u00a0more than $20 billion from the drug, according to the\u00a0American Prospect.<\/em><\/p>\n\n \n\n \n \n \n

Biden\u2019s Record on Drug Prices<\/h2>\n \n

Becerra\u2019s decision may be a dramatic about-face, but it is consistent for his boss, President Joe Biden.<\/p>\n

Biden was vice president when the Obama administration\u00a0rejected<\/a>\u00a0congressional Democrats\u2019 demand that the government use the same power to lower the skyrocketing prices of medicine in America.<\/p>\n

As a senator in 2000, Biden was one of just\u00a0eight<\/a>\u00a0Democrats who helped pharmaceutical lobbyists kill\u00a0a measure<\/a> spearheaded by Sen. Paul Wellstone (D-MN) and then representative Bernie Sanders (I-VT) that would have reinstated the Reagan-era requirement that drug companies sell medicines developed with public money at a reasonable price.<\/p>\n

That requirement was\u00a0repealed<\/a>\u00a0by the Clinton administration in 1995, following\u00a0pressure by drugmakers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnderstandably, members of the public are concerned that the prices they pay are higher than those in other high-income countries,\u201d the Biden administration wrote in a letter to cancer patients on Tuesday, adding that officials share \u201cyour concern about the high price of drugs and the burden it places on patients and their families, particularly the uninsured and the underinsured.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, the administration insisted that it was rejecting the petition to use so-called \u201cmarch-in rights\u201d to seize the patents on Xtandi because the prostate cancer drug is \u201cwidely available to the public on the market.\u201d<\/p>\n

The administration did not respond to our request for comment.<\/p>\n\n \n \n \n

Americans Fund Pharma R&D, Get Rewarded With World\u2019s Highest Prices<\/h2>\n \n

Studies\u00a0have shown<\/a> that most, if not all, major new drugs are originally developed with funding from the US government. But at the urging of pharmaceutical lobbyists \u2014 and as nearly a quarter billion dollars<\/a> of pharmaceutical industry campaign cash flowed to both parties \u2014 federal officials have refused to use their existing power to reduce the US prices of those drugs.<\/p>\n

The result: the American public is financing pharmaceutical research and development and then being rewarded for that investment with the world\u2019s highest<\/a>\u00a0prices for medicine, all while drugmakers report ever-higher profit margins.<\/p>\n

Prior to joining the Biden administration, Becerra had criticized this situation, expressing support for using executive authority to crack down on high drug prices.<\/p>\n

As a member of Congress in 2016, Becerra\u00a0signed on<\/a> to a letter to Barack Obama’s Department of Health and Human Services calling on officials to broadly use \u201cmarch-in rights\u201d to lower the cost of prescription drugs \u2014 including \u201cspecialty drugs, like those to treat cancer, which are frequently developed with taxpayer funds.\u201d<\/p>\n

Under the Bayh-Dole Act, passed four decades ago, the federal government can waive patent exclusivity for drugs whose research was funded by federal government dollars, speeding the arrival of far-cheaper generics to the market.<\/p>\n

In this case, the patent on Xtandi is held by pharma giant Astellas, which in turn shares the US market with Pfizer. Xtandi has proven to be effective in treating prostate cancer, and is on<\/a>\u00a0the World Health Organization\u2019s List of Essential Medicines<\/em>.<\/p>\n

And yet, despite march-in rights enshrined in the Bayh-Dole Act, federal officials have never exercised those rights, even as drug prices have skyrocketed.<\/p>\n\n \n \n \n

Big Pharma\u2019s Big Lobbying Campaign<\/h2>\n \n

A furious lobbying campaign led up to Becerra\u2019s reversal on the question of march-in rights.<\/p>\n

The US Chamber of Commerce, which spent more than $80 million<\/a>\u00a0lobbying in 2022, explicitly stated in public\u00a0reports<\/a>\u00a0that it was lobbying on a \u201cpetition to HHS to grant march-in rights for the patents on the drug Xtandi.\u201d<\/p>\n

The chamber\u2019s board<\/a>\u00a0of directors includes a\u00a0top lobbyist<\/a>\u00a0from Pfizer, which has\u00a0disclosed<\/a>\u00a0lobbying the White House on \u201cBayh-Dole March-In Rights.\u201d Astellas has also\u00a0lobbied<\/a>\u00a0on \u201cissues related to march-in rights under the Bayh-Dole Act.\u201d<\/p>\n

The powerful drug lobby Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, known as PhRMA, similarly\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0lobbying on \u201cBayh-Dole march-in rights policy issues.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pfizer\u00a0spent<\/a>\u00a0$15 million on lobbying in 2022, while PhRMA spent\u00a0$29 million<\/a>. Astellas spent\u00a0$2 million<\/a>\u00a0on lobbying.<\/p>\n

Texas representative Lloyd Doggett, the top Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee\u2019s Health Subcommittee, panned the administration\u2019s decision in a statement<\/a>\u00a0Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday\u2019s decision is a blow to prostate cancer patients, their families, and taxpayers,\u201d said Doggett, adding: \u201cThe Biden Administration has missed yet another opportunity to do something meaningful to lower prescription drug costs and protect taxpayer investments. Its decision protects monopolists over taxpayers and patients, despite clear statutory authority and reasonableness to intervene.\u201d<\/p>\n\n \n \n \n\n \n \n

You can subscribe to David Sirota\u2019s investigative journalism project, the\u00a0Lever<\/i>,\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This post was originally published on Jacobin<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the summer of 2020, then California attorney general Xavier Becerra demanded Donald Trump\u2019s administration use existing law to lower the price of medicines that were originally developed at taxpayer expense. \u201cWe cannot afford to leave the supply of this critical medication to chance and the whims of the marketplace when it was funded in [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":138,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1035573"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/138"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1035573"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1035573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1035574,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1035573\/revisions\/1035574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1035573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1035573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1035573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}