AstraZeneca announced nearly $2 billion in Q2 2024 earnings today, a remarkable total amid the company’s ongoing legal battle to block the Biden-Harris administration from lowering medication costs for millions of Americans. The pharmaceutical giant is one of five companies appealing recent court rulings that uphold Medicare’s negotiation authority.
“Despite repeated losses in federal court, big pharma remains determined to prevent the Biden-Harris administration from reducing drug costs for seniors,” said Accountable.US Executive Director Tony Carrk. “The industry moves from one courtroom to the next, arguing for the right to inflate prices on life-saving medications without limit, but their arguments continue to fall flat. In the court of public opinion, Big Pharma and their allies in Congress have already lost. No one believes that big drug companies need to charge the highest prices in the world while boasting of record profits.”
AstraZeneca’s Farxiga, which treats diabetes, heart failure, and chronic kidney disease, is one of the first 10 drugs affected by the Biden administration’s cost-lowering program. Farxiga has cost Medicare nearly $6 billion as of 2022, averaging $4,046 per patient.
Since its launch in 2014, Farxiga’s price has increased by 54%. AstraZeneca charges U.S. patients seven times more than customers in Switzerland and nearly 15 times more than customers in Australia. While the industry continues to resist Medicare’s new negotiation power, the program is expected to save nearly 19 million seniors and other Medicare Part D enrollees $400 a year by 2025.
A recent report from government watchdog Accountable.US revealed that the eight pharmaceutical companies manufacturing the ten medications chosen for Medicare price negotiation spent far less on research and development compared to their spending on political activity, executive compensation, and payouts to wealthy investors in 2023.
Despite the pharmaceutical industry’s resistance to the Biden-Harris administration’s efforts to lower drug costs, national polling shows strong support for these programs.
