High prices start with Big Pharma. Prices won’t fall until we crack down on drug corporations.

PhRMA also put figures today to its U.S. infrastructure investments and patient assistance programs. Most of these are not new, and patient assistance programs are notoriously hard to navigate.

Lowering prices is a simpler way to promote access to medicine.

But the prices are still unaffordably high for most patients and cannot substitute for offering broadly low prices to insurers and benefit managers, to support widespread access.

Some drugmakers have announced lower list prices for some drugs through direct-to-patient sales. These can be useful for limited numbers of people.

Puffing up direct-to-patient sales lets Big Pharma pass the blame for high prices to insurers and benefit managers, without taking serious responsibility itself to make medicine affordable.

Meanwhile, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), ranking member of the Senate health committee, issued a report showing that prices are higher now for nearly 700 prescription drugs than when Donald Trump took office.

www.sanders.senate.gov/wp-content/u...

Today PhRMA announced a new website, AmericasMedicines.com, to support direct-to-patient sales of prescription drugs.

The White House had set today as a deadline for drugmakers to offer Americans lower prices or face government action, including an expected rule on most-favored nation pricing.

Thanks to health leaders Emily Bass, Mitchell Warren, Asia Russell, Amanda Banda, and Isata Dumbuya. And to our event co-hosts UNAIDS, Health GAP, People's Medicines Alliance, UAEM, Treatment Action Group, RESULTS, and Partners In Health.

We had a critical discussion about continuing the fight to bring medicines to all, with the first step being bringing that breakthrough — at that price — to the world.

Thanks to UNAIDS' Winnie Byanyima and Unitaid's Tenu Avafia for joining us today and for your leadership.

State is cutting HIV/AIDS programming over Congress’s objection and full appropriation, but there is no “America First” when it comes to infectious disease. Trump’s cuts will save no more than a rounding error, but cost America its credibility, and likely millions of people their very lives.

U.S. agencies supported the global mpox fight & helped overcome hurdles including vax supply & delivery through Jan 2025.

Trump's exec orders freezing foreign aid & work with WHO ended that support.

The White House needs to fix this, rather than let another pandemic spread for no reason at all.

MVA-BN is the 2nd-most expensive vaccine UNICEF buys. The U.S. appears to have paid less than UNICEF to stockpile MVA-BN.

$2.4bn in public funding supported MVA-BN's development.

We called on Bavarian Nordic to lower its price and increase supply to UNICEF: www.citizen.org/article/lett...

Africa CDC has a 6.4m dose target & calls the MVA-BN vaccine’s high price a major bottleneck.

UNICEF can't afford the remaining 350,000 doses of its million dose contract, at $65 per dose.

Bavarian Nordic has not responded to calls to lower its price and publish its costs. That needs to change.

"Africa CDC is “pushing” its member countries to “mobilize domestic resources,” ACDC says, & hoping African companies can soon produce mpox vaccines at affordable prices."

That's needed. @cohenjon.bsky.social

Meanwhile high prices contribute to artificial scarcity.

www.science.org/content/arti...

We compared supply in Africa now to that of the U.S. during the previous mpox emergency that ran from 2022–3. Africa has 5.7x fewer unallocated doses but 69x more cases, at the same 9-month mark, or about 393x fewer doses per case. www.citizen.org/article/mpox...

Thank you Jon.

We estimate that Africa is managing with about 400 times fewer MVA-BN doses per mpox case as the U.S. had at the same point in its 2023 emergency: www.citizen.org/news/mpox-va...