Overview

Pharmaceutical companies make important life-saving medicines. But that shouldn't give them license to drive up drug prices, ignore the risks of harmful side-effects, or block needed reforms in Congress and the states. Consider:

• Pharmaceutical companies use direct-to-consumer ads to sell their latest, most expensive drugs. The industry claims that these ads help to educate consumers, but a Florida PIRG analysis of FDA records for the years 2001 to 2005 found that the ads for 150 different drugs were false or misleading.

• Merck, the manufacturer of Vioxx, continued to market its painkiller to doctors and patients years after the company had substantial evidence of increased the risk of heart problems. FDA researchers estimate that, in less than 5 years, Vioxx may have caused as many as 139,000 heart attacks and strokes.

• The industry continues to use unscrupulous marketing techniques to influence prescriptions that doctors write, including fancy meals, travel junkets and money—in the form of “consultant” fees.

• More than 3 million seniors are falling into the doughnut hole—Medicare’s prescription drug  coverage gap. Seniors have to keep paying their monthly premiums, but Medicare does not pay for their drugs until seniors pay $3,600 in out-of-pocket  expenses for their medicines. When Congress created the Medicare prescription drug benefit, the pharmaceutical industry and its lobbyists inserted a provision that prohibits the program from negotiating bulk-rate discounts for drugs.

Illinois PIRG is working to require drug companies to fully disclose studies and information about the safety and effectiveness of their drugs, to enable the FDA to better crack down on misleading drug advertisements, to rein in inappropriate gifts to doctors, and to allow Congress to negotiate drug discounts for the Medicare program.