I don’t need to tell you prescription prices are through the roof. But here’s what you might not know: Big Pharma is buying off the competition so they can keep their prices sky high.
It ought to be criminal — and if the Federal Trade Commission has anything to say about it — it soon will be.
Brand-name drugs have a set amount of time during which they have exclusive rights on a certain formula. After this time, it’s up for grabs. At that point, other drug companies are free to produce the same drug, but without the slick brand name. Generic pharmaceuticals are generally significantly cheaper than their brand-name counterparts.
But the brand-name makers do so well with their inflated profits that they can afford to pay other drug makers millions NOT to produce generic forms of the drugs — leaving you no choice but to pay an arm and a leg for certain medications.
According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), that alone is costing consumers an extra $3.5 billion a year. And since the government pays for about one third of all prescription drug costs, it costs Uncle Sam about 1.2 billion extra per year.
No wonder the government is stepping in to put a stop to these pay-for-delay deals.
Never delaying my opinion,