September 5, 2025
TOPLINE
In case you missed it, a study recently published in JAMA Health Forum found lost competition due to Big Pharma’s patent thickets on just four widely prescribed brand name drugs cost patients, taxpayers and the U.S. health care system more than $3.5 billion in excess spending over two years. The analysis included a review of delayed generic competition to imatinib (Gleevec), glatiramer (Copaxone), celecoxib (Celebrex) and bimatoprost (Lumigan). These brand name products all first began facing competition from more affordable alternatives between 2014 and 2018.
Big Pharma has a long history of price-gouging American patients through tactics designed to game the U.S. patent system and block competition from more affordable alternatives — enabling pharmaceutical manufacturers to maintain monopolies over their biggest money-makers. Big Pharma companies often file many, even dozens or hundreds, of patents on a single medication, a practice known as patent thicketing, to extend exclusivity and block competition from more affordable options, for months, years or even decades.
Market-based solutions to crack down on Big Pharma’s egregious patent abuse have a demonstrated track record of strong bipartisan support and should be swiftly passed by Congress to boost competition and help lower prescription drug prices for patients. In April, the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary advanced several such bipartisan solutions that would foster greater prescription drug competition, projected to produce billions of dollars in savings by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), including The Affordable Prescriptions for Patients Act (S. 1041) that would crack down on Big Pharma’s patent thickets and was unanimously passed by the U.S. Senate during the last Congress.
Read more HERE.
QUOTES OF THE WEEK
“Senator Durbin and I have a bipartisan bill that requires price disclosures on TV ads. Price transparency is important in drug advertisement. I know that President Trump, Vice President Vance, and [Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy] are all supportive of this effort.”
U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA)
“Keytruda has been on the market since 2014. It pulled in nearly $18 billion last year in the United States alone. It costs patients up to $175,000 a year, draining Medicare of billions and forcing families into crushing debt or to forgo life-saving care.”
U.S. Senator Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV)
DATA POINTS YOU SHOULD KNOW
$5.7 Billion
The Medicare spending on GLP-1s in 2022, a massive increase from $57 million in 2018, according to a report from JAMA Network Open.
TWEETS OF THE WEEK
@realtahiramin: “A new study in @JAMA_current by Dongzhe Hong, @SeanTu2, and Reed F. Beall looks at the cost of extended market exclusivities due to patent term extensions and patent gaming.
@AccessibleMeds: “Last year, generic medicines comprised 90 percent of all prescriptions filled, but only 12 percent of prescription spending. In sharp contrast, brand drugs supported patients less often— making up only 10 percent of prescriptions filled but adding up to 88 percent of the total drug spend. This means that in just one year, Americans spent $98 billion on prescription generic medicines and a whopping $700 billion on brand drugs.”
ROAD TO RECOVERY
Law360: A Change In Big Pharma Response To FTC Delisting Warnings
The Federal Trade Commission continues to be concerned about improper patent listings in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Orange Book, their deterrence of generic entry, and their consequent impact on prescription drug prices. In response, the FTC has identified allegedly improperly listed patents in three waves. First, in November 2023, the FTC sent notices to pharmaceutical companies regarding hundreds of entries on the Orange Book, which involved 62 unique patents held by 10 firms.
Association for Accessible Medicines: 2025 U.S. Generic & Biosimilar Medicines Savings Report
AAM’s annual savings report, in partnership with the IQVIA Institute, reveals the use of Food & Drug Administration (FDA) approved generic and biosimilar medicines created $467 billion in savings in 2024 for patients and the U.S. healthcare system—and $3.4 trillion in savings the last ten years. Savings from biosimilar medicines alone increased to $20.2 billion in 2024 and $56.2 billion since the first biosimilar entry, a decade ago in 2015.
PHARMA’S POOR PROGNOSIS
STAT News: Gilead Wants State AIDS Drug Programs To Pay Significant Price Hikes For HIV Meds
Gilead Sciences, the largest maker of HIV medicines, is seeking to boost prices significantly for several treatments that are widely distributed by state AIDS Drug Assistance Programs… The company recently told the state programs that it wants to raise prices in the high-single digits, on average, as part of a new agreement scheduled to go into effect in January 2026.
Malone News: Big Pharma’s Advertising Blitz: Billions On TV Ads, Medical Education, And Lobbying
Pharmaceutical commercials are nearly impossible to avoid in the United States. On average, American TV viewers see as many as nine drug ads per day, totaling about 16 hours a year—far more time than most people spend with their primary-care physician. Only the U.S. and New Zealand allow direct-to-consumer (DTC) prescription drug ads, making American airwaves a primary battleground for pharma marketing.
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