Pfizer announced it raked in $58.5 billion this year during their earnings report today. While they make billions, Americans pay exorbitantly high prices for prescription drugs. Pfizer opposed the Biden administration reforms that lower prescription drug prices.
- In 2022 Albert Bourla received over $33 million in compensation as CEO of Pfizer, making him the fifth highest paid pharmaceutical CEO in the country.
- While publicly Pfizer has complained that the Inflation Reduction Act would reduce innovation, CEO Albert Bourla bragged about the company’s record innovative prospects stating, “We are encouraged by the strong performance of our non-COVID products… Pfizer received a record number of nine new molecular entity approvals by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)—medicines and vaccines that are expected to favorably impact Pfizer’s performance in the coming years.
- Pfizer has faced a year of lawsuits, from patent infringement claims on both their COVID and RSV vaccines to compensation discrimination against female employees in New York to a whistleblower lawsuit after the company fired an executive for raising the alarm on its business practices in China, which the U.S. is currently investigating. This is all par for the course though when it comes to pharmaceutical companies skirting the law in order to monopolize sectors and raise prices.
- On aggregate, drug companies charge Americans prices up to four times higher than prices in other countries, forcing patients to cut pills and skip doses.
- Over 80 percent of voters support giving Medicare the power to negotiate, making it the most popular provision in the Inflation Reduction Act.
The Inflation Reduction Act brings down prescription drug costs for everyday Americans, especially seniors, by capping the price of insulin at $35 per month and providing free vaccines including shingles, giving Medicare the power to negotiate lower drug prices, and limiting the amount people have to pay each year for prescription drugs to $2,000 annually starting in 2025.
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