December 5, 2025
TOPLINE
On Wednesday, POLITICO reported that GOP pollster Tony Fabrizio, a pollster for President Trump’s campaign, “showed new polling to members of the Republican Study Committee” urging them to “pivot to reducing drug prices.” During the meeting, Fabrizio “advised a group of House Republicans…[to] focus on reducing drug prices.”
Earlier this year, in February, CSRxP released the results of public opinion research conducted by Fabrizio showing that American voters overwhelmingly hold Big Pharma responsible for high prescription drug prices and support market-based solutions to lower prices by holding big drug companies accountable, including for gaming the U.S. patent system to block competition.
“Results from the new national survey of voters…show broad and overwhelmingly bipartisan support for policy solutions to lower the cost of prescription drugs by addressing pricing and anti-competitive practices from drug companies,” Fabrizio and fellow pollster Bob Ward wrote in a memo on their findings. “The electorate, including equal numbers of Trump and Harris Voters, holds intensely unfavorable views of drug companies. By wide margins, voters are very concerned about the cost of Rx drugs, hold drug companies responsible, and clearly identify drug company profits as the driver of high drug costs.” Read more on the public opinion research conducted by Fabrizio Ward in February HERE.
Also, in case you missed it, on Monday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Give Kids a Chance Act of 2025 (H.R. 1262), which includes bipartisan provisions from the Increasing Access to Generic Drug Applications Act (H.R. 1843) to improve transparency in generic drug applications.
This bipartisan, market-based solution would reform the Q1/Q2 sameness requirements from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that Big Pharma abuses to extend exclusivity, promoting a more efficient and streamlined generic drug approval process. These reforms were adopted as an amendment during the House Energy and Commerce Committee markup in September, where they advanced unanimously by a vote of 47-0. Read more on H.R.1843 HERE and read more on Q1/Q2 reforms HERE.
QUOTES OF THE WEEK
“CSRxP applauds the House for advancing bipartisan, market-based reforms to increase transparency in generic drug applications and help stop Big Pharma from exploiting Q1/Q2 requirements to delay competition and keep drug prices high. We urge the Senate to swiftly pass this commonsense solution to help foster greater competition from more affordable alternatives to high-priced brand name drugs.”
CSRxP executive director Lauren Aronson
DATA POINT YOU SHOULD KNOW
82 Percent
According to a survey conducted by Tony Fabrizio and Bob Ward earlier this year, 82 percent of voters support reforming patent laws to prevent drug companies from abusing the system to extend monopolies on drugs longer than intended and block lower cost generic drugs and biosimilars from the market.
TWEETS OF THE WEEK
@bmj_latest: “Next generation weight loss drugs are prohibitively expensive for many in the US who would benefit from taking them—and may remain so, thanks to the phenomenon of patent thickets. Paige Huffman reports https://www.bmj.com/content/391/bmj.r2384?utm_campaign=usage&utm_content=tbmj_sprout&utm_id=BMJ005&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter”
@Runaway_Rx: “Big Pharma loves gaming the patent system to keep its prices sky-high. #BigPharma’s three big plays – The Fresh Coat, The Delay Game, and The Thicket Trap – keep drug prices high while patients pay more money. Shouldn’t that be considered foul play? Take a look at their Patent Playbook here: http://bit.ly/48FSzbi #TheProblemIsThePrice”
ROAD TO RECOVERY
STAT News: Four In Five Americans Support Patent Reform To Lower Drug Prices, New Survey Finds
A new national survey reveals overwhelming bipartisan support for overhauling the patent system to address soaring prescription drug costs in the United States, with 80% of Americans backing such reforms. The survey of 726 American adults, commissioned by the Initiative for Medicines, Access and Knowledge (I-MAK) and conducted by Franklin & Marshall College’s Center for Opinion Research, found consensus across party lines on the need to address high prescription drug prices through patent reform. The findings come as Americans grapple with difficult choices about their medications due to cost. Among the 71% of adults who reported taking prescription drugs in the past year, nearly one in three said they did not fill at least one prescription because they couldn’t afford it.
Inside Health Policy: Researchers: More USPTO Action Needed To Curb Drug IP Abuses
Policymakers must act to strengthen the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s examination processes and prevent brand drug companies’ ability to receive multiple anticompetitive patients, researchers with the University of Alabama urged in an article published this month in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). Authors Sean Tu and Ana Santos Rutschman argue that in addition to stronger examination procedures, courts should consider deterring anticompetitive conduct by requiring repayment of profits from gained through anticompetitive pricing strategies, a remedy they say is being applied in some foreign jurisdictions.
PHARMA’S POOR PROGNOSIS
The BMJ: Will Americans Ever Be Able To Afford Weight Loss Drugs?
In the US, these drugs are still too expensive for many people who would benefit from them. Hopes that lower priced generics will be available after the expiry of patents may be confounded by a US phenomenon that has kept other groundbreaking drugs prohibitively expensive: patent thickets… “Patent thickets are inherently egregious, but in the case of GLP-1 drugs, they’re particularly egregious because they’re transparently relying on patents that have nothing to do with clinical effectiveness,” says Jon Conradi, a spokesperson for the Campaign for Sustainable Rx Pricing.
The Tennessean: Opinion: Patent Abuse And How It Keeps Life-Saving Drugs Out Of Reach
My husband has fought leukemia for more than 10 years. As part of his therapy, he takes a drug that can cost more than $30,000 a month and is so hard on the body that one doctor told us he wouldn’t give it to a farm animal. Unfortunately, it’s the best one we have, in no small part because Big Pharma’s patent abuse has kept cheaper and/or less harmful alternatives off the market.
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