https://www.change.org/p/secretary-of-health-and-human-servi...
Prices have increased more than tenfold between 2000 (average price $5,000-$10,000 per year) and today (average price of new cancer drugs exceeds $120,000 per year).
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/15/opinion/why-drugs-cost-so-...
Novartis, the company that makes the leukemia drug Gleevec, keeps raising the drug’s price, even though the drug has already delivered billions in profit to the company. In 2001 Novartis charged $4,540, in 2014 dollars, for a month of treatment; now it charges $8,488. In its pricing, Novartis is just keeping up with other companies as they charge more and more for their drugs. They know we can’t say no.
http://www.nbcnews.com/health/cancer/utterly-broken-drug-mar...
Lauren Baumann is one of the lucky ones. Though she has cancer, chronic myeloid leukemia, it is manageable, as long as she takes a daily pill called Gleevec. Gleevec is considered a wonder drug, turning Lauren's leukemia from a death sentence to a disease she and thousands of others can live with. The problem is, even with health insurance and a full-time job, Lauren can't afford the monthly co-pay for Gleevec. It can be as high as $2,000 a month — twice the average mortgage payment in the U.S.
"I feel like you get punished," says Baumann. "I didn't ask to get cancer; I didn't ask to get sick. I was 26 and I was perfectly healthy."
This is essentially extortion due to price inelasticity of demand. $9,000-$12,500/month to survive, for the rest of your natural life! Patients+insurers have to pay whatever price the companies ask. For something as crucial as a life-saving drug, maybe the prices shouldn't be set only by market forces? Maybe generics should be allowed for import after patents expire the first time around?
(There are analyses of drug discovery costs around, and even after all those costs and reliance on basic research funded by taxpayer money, pharma companies make a very healthy profit. Much of the money goes into marketing, which we wouldn't need so much of in a system similar to the NHS which approves drugs for dispensing countrywide.)
Please sign the above Change.org petition (first link) and spread it! I normally don't make appeals, but this is one truly egregious case of unethical profiting.
An international panel of 115 doctors co-authored a paper decrying these ridiculous prices and offering 7 solutions, including allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices once again (which they now aren't allowed to!):
http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2015/07/23/155-ang...