Posted by Michael Wonder on 08 Mar 2017
High U.S. drug prices cannot be explained by R&D spending alone
7 March 2017 - Pharmaceutical companies often cite research and development spending to justify high drug prices in the U.S. But they make much more from those high prices than they spend on R&D, researchers found.
According to research published on the Health Affairs blog, the 15 drug companies that made the 20 best-selling drugs worldwide in 2015 made $116 billion in excess revenue from premium drug prices in the U.S. Meanwhile, they spent only $76 billion on global research and development.
The excess revenue comes from drug prices that are much higher in the U.S. than in Canada, Denmark, Ireland and the U.K., the researchers said. Drug prices in those countries for the 15 companies studied were 41% of their U.S. counterparts on average.
