Senator Chuck Schumer has long been an advocate for lowering health care costs for New Yorkers, and in his position as Majority Leader of the Senate, for Americans across the country. The Inflation Reduction Act, which Senator Schumer helped usher through the Senate, included several critical policies that are already helping to lower prescription drug costs for many. However, one area the Inflation Reduction Act did not address is the pharmaceutical industry’s abuse of the patent system.
Although this may be an under-the-radar issue for some, it has serious ramifications for the prices Americans pay for prescription drugs – which are the highest in the world. According to one recent study from the American Economic Liberties Project and the Initiative for Medicines, Access and Knowledge (I-MAK), several of Big Pharma’s most commonly used anticompetitive tactics, including several tactics aimed at gaming the patent system, cost the U.S. healthcare system more than $40 billion in just one year, 2019.
As the study outlines, “Drug companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars advancing these schemes because they have calculated that doing so is significantly more profitable than competing with generics and biosimilars based on price and quality.”
The pharmaceutical industry uses a range of mechanisms to abuse our patent system, including tactics such as “product hopping,” “patent thicketing” and “evergreening.” All are ultimately aimed at keeping their blockbuster products on the market longer without having to face competition from generic and biosimilar drugs. This in turn locks patients into paying higher prices for prescription medications for longer.
While there are several egregious examples of Big Pharma’s patent abuse preventing competition from entering the market, the most notorious example may be around AbbVie’s rheumatoid arthritis drug Humira. While Humira is set to face competition for the first time this year, during it’s almost twenty years on the market, AbbVie’s patent strategy around this drug set the example other companies have followed in terms of fending off competition and securing extended sales by constructing impenetrable walls of patents.
Over the course of its time on the market, AbbVie applied for more than 300 patents on Humira, securing more than half of these. Importantly, more than 90 percent of the patents AbbVie filed on Humira came after the drug was already approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), demonstrating that AbbVie was seeking additional patent protection to extend the length of time the drug could be on the market without competition.
This strategy led to obscene profits for Humira and forced patients and the U.S. healthcare system to pay egregious sums of money. Since its launch in 2002, Humira has raked in over $200 billion for AbbVie. To give you a sense of the scale of these profits, last year AbbVie brought in more in revenue ($21 billion) for just this one drug than all 32 teams combined brought in for the National Football League ($19 billion).
In my work at God’s Battalion of Prayer Ministries, I’ve encountered countless individuals and families who have been burdened by the high price of prescription drugs. It remains an issue for far too many New Yorkers, and far too many Americans. According to recent polling, almost one-in-three Americans report difficulty affording their medications as prescribed due to cost. And importantly, Americans understand the where the blame truly lies. Almost eight-in-ten respondents to the same poll said that pharmaceutical industry profits are a “major factor” contributing to the price of prescription drugs.
In order to build on the positive progress made in terms of lowering prescription drug prices in the Inflation Reduction Act, Congress must take the next step and work to crack down on the many ways the pharmaceutical industry abuses the patent system.
A solution to address this critical priority has already been introduced in Congress. The bipartisan Affordable Prescriptions for Patients Act of 2023, introduced by Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and John Cornyn (R-TX), would crack down on several anticompetitive tactics the pharmaceutical industry employs to abuse the patent system and help increase competition by enabling more generic and biosimilar products to come to market, thereby lowering prices.
This is an important legislative solution that would help ease the burden of New Yorkers and Americans across the country contending with the high price of many prescription drugs.
In an increasingly divided Congress, our elected leaders can continue to find common ground in working to lower Americans’ healthcare costs. Democrats saw the value of this in the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act last year. I’m certain they will see the value in keeping up the momentum by passing The Affordable Prescriptions for Patients Act of 2023 later this year.
Reverend Alfred S. Cockfield is COO of God’s Battalion of Prayer Ministries.
