Skip to main content

WATCH: Katie Porter, Squad Members, Eviscerate Big Pharma CEOs Over 'Exorbitant' Drug Prices


House Democrats—including three Squad members—tore into pharmaceutical industry chief executives during a Wednesday congressional hearing on Big Pharma profiteering, with Rep. Katie Porter verbally eviscerating one CEO for more than tripling the price of a critical cancer drug.

Wednesday marked the first day of a two-day House Oversight Committee hearing titled "Unsustainable Drug Prices: Testimony from the CEOs." Bristol Myers Squibb CEO Giovanni Caforio, Teva Pharmaceuticals CEO Kåre Schultz, and former Celgene CEO Mark Alles all endured nearly four hours of grilling over the price of prescription drugs—which are almost always far more expensive in the United States than anywhere else in the world.

Porter (D-Calif.), a former consumer protection attorney, was the most ferocious committee member to address the CEOs. Bringing out her infamous white board, she attacked Celgene's repeated price hikes for the cancer drug Revlimid, which now costs $763 per dose—in 2005 it cost $215. When Alles attempted to explain that the drug has been approved for new uses, Porter hit back, and hard.

WATCH: Katie Porter absolutely grills a Big Pharma CEO who *tripled* the price of a cancer drug. "To recap here, the drug didn't get any better. The cancer patients didn't get any better. You just got better at making money. You just refined your skills at price gouging." https://t.co/Kzl6AwRtEF — PC's Access to Meds (@PCMedsAccess) September 30, 2020

"Did the drug start to work faster? Were there fewer side effects? How did you change the formula or production of Revlimid to justify this price increase?" Porter asked. "To recap here: The drug didn't get any better, the cancer patients didn't get any better, you just got better at making money—you just refined your skills at price gouging."

I would love to see @RepKatiePorter take on Donald Trump. — Robert Reich (@RBReich) September 30, 2020

Porter has built a reputation for speaking tough truth to power, on issues ranging from defending access to crucial public benefits, to challenging mega-bank CEOs on income inequality, to exposing the pernicious influence of dark money in politics.

Toward the end of Wednesday's nearly four-hour session, three of the four members of the so-called Squad—Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.)—slammed the CEOs over what Ocasio-Cortez called the "exorbitant cost" of life-saving medications.

Armed with a chart showing the cost of 40 milligrams of Teva's multiple sclerosis drug Copaxone is more than five times as high in the U.S. as in Britain, Ocasio-Cortez refuted an assertion by Schultz that medications cost more in the United States because American patients have "very broad, and very early access" to new drugs.

Citing Teva's own internal documents, Ocasio-Cortez showed the company was forced to lower prices by European governments—which unlike the U.S. have instituted spending controls—even as it raised prices for American patients.

Pressley asserted that "the lack of access to affordable life-saving medicine is an injustice [that] represents an act of economic violence and an attack on the basic principle that healthcare is a fundamental human right," while Tlaib ripped Schultz for using charitable donations like "a side hustle."

"Your pharmaceutical company makes these so-called charitable donations so you look like you give a shit about sick people," said Tlaib. "But in reality these are just another scheme by your corporation to make money off of sick people."

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Biden says K-12 education isn't working — calls for free pre-K to "grade 14"

President Joe Biden on Wednesday praised the nation's K-12 education system for fueling America's economic growth for almost a century. But, he stressed, that system may no longer be sufficient as the foundation for future prosperity. Mr. Biden's American Families Plan is taking aim at an issue that has bedeviled economists as well as millions of families struggling to stay afloat financially: A high school diploma is no longer enough to secure a middle-class life. Under the White House proposal, the nation's K-12 system would be expanded on both ends — from free pre-kindergarten education through a "grade 14," funding two years of schooling before kindergarten and two years of post-high school education through free community college. There's plenty of economic research that links rising high school graduation rates throughout the 20th century to faster U.S. economic growth. For example, broadening education help women enter the workforce and enabled men ...
Post a Comment
Read more

New climate envoy John Kerry sold off energy holdings to avoid conflict of interest, disclosures show

Financial disclosures released by former Secretary of State John Kerry indicate that until March of this year he held hundreds of thousands of dollars of investments in energy-related companies that may end up being affected by policies he'll help shape as President Joe Biden's new climate envoy. An ABC News analysis of his assets show that in recent years, Kerry held stakes in at least three dozen companies related to the energy industry, including firms dealing in electric, oil and gas, and nuclear energy, with shares worth between $204,000 and $960,000. Kerry had also recently held high-ranking positions within firms and entities that could end up being regulated by his climate action policies, filings show. A certificate of divestiture issued by the Office of Government Ethics on March 8 shows Kerry's plan to divest from companies that could pose a conflict of interest for his new role as U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, a common measure that newly appointed...
Post a Comment
Read more

GOP Congressman Skips COVID-19 Relief Vote To Speak At White Nationalist Rally

Rep. Paul Gosar, a Republican from Arizona, spoke Friday night at a far-right extremist rally organized by white nationalist figurehead Nick Fuentes while his colleagues in the House passed a massive coronavirus relief package. Gosar, who has served in Congress for more than a decade, submitted a request to vote by proxy due to the threat of the pandemic. Yet instead of staying home, he traveled to Orlando, Florida, where he served as a surprise headliner at the America First Political Action Conference (AFPAC) alongside Steve King, the white nationalist former congressman from Iowa. The coronavirus aid passed the House with no Republican support and is now under consideration in the Senate. Fuentes, the main AFPAC organizer, attended both the deadly 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and the U.S. Capitol riot of this year, although he claims he did not storm the building. His extremist event was held not far from the 2021 Conservative Political Action Conferenc...
Post a Comment
Read more