People Over Pharma Profits National Day of Action
If there is one thing that joins people together, it’s the fact that we will all, at different times in our lives, be faced with medical conditions that require prescriptions medications in order to get well, or even to live.
We have all heard the horror-stories—Young adults and children dying from rationing basic drugs like insulin and epinephrine, cancer drugs that cost $1,000 per pill. Whether one has a sore throat, high blood pressure or cancer, everyone deserves access to affordable medicines in order to live healthy, productive lives.
And while Trump and members of Congress, on the one hand claim to want to rein-in constituents’ drug costs, the reality is that Trump’s re-worked NAFTA 2.0 includes provisions written by Big Pharma, that gives drug companies the right to expand patents on life-saving drugs for an additional 10 years-- longer than the patent extensions included in the god-awful TPP (That Trump railed against).
It’s time to fix this broken system. That’s why on August 20th, organizations, advocates and patients are joining together to demand that lawmakers take serious action to lower drug prices, including NOT signing NAFTA 2.0 with these egregious provisions.
ORGANIZE A PEOPLE OVER PHARMA NATIONAL DAY OF ACTION / AUGUST 20, 2019
NO MONOPOLY MEDICINE PRICES IN NAFTA 2.0
Background:
President Trump is promising to lower drug costs while at the same time pandering to Big Pharma with a deal that, among other awful provisions, locks in high drug costs for the next decade in the NAFTA 2.0 proposal. Members of Congress, including those who support controlling the industry’s power to set high prices, are hearing much more from Pharma lobbyists than from constituents. We plan to change that by organizing events with the purpose of taking our message directly to lawmakers in districts across the country. These events can also help leverage media to educate the public about President Trump’s NAFTA 2.0 Pharma giveaway.
One thing is certain: binding trade agreements are not the appropriate platform on which to determine national healthcare policy. We need to make sure our representatives know we are very much aware that Trump’s trade team is trying to pull a healthcare fast one on a public that is fed up with the high cost of life-saving medicines.
ORGANIZE YOUR PEOPLE OVER PHARMA NATIONAL DAY OF ACTION EVENT
What kind of events should we organize?
People over Pharma actions should be a range of press-worthy events outside Members of Congress (Senate and House) offices. These events can be simple press conferences, small rallies, or petition or pill bottle deliveries to lawmakers.
Messaging:
- NO NAFTA 2 with high drug cost patent protection
- Lawmakers must take action to lower drug prices now to stop drug companies from price-gouging patients by setting prices out of reach in order to inflate their profits.
- Tweaks, work-arounds, and half-measures aren’t enough to address the growing crisis for millions of people who can’t afford medicine: we need an overhaul that ends drug companies’ monopoly power to set prices, un-rigs the system and puts in place instead fair rules for access and affordability so that everyone who needs prescriptions can get them.
- ·It’s time for every elected leader to take responsibility for real changes that fix the system based on what’s best for people, not for Pharma profits.
- GOVERNMENT RESPONSIBILITY: It is our government’s responsibility to guarantee that everyone in the United States, no matter where they live, what they look like or how much money they have, has access to affordable medicines they need to stay healthy and take care of their families. We oppose policies that put medicine economically out of reach for individuals or families here or that deny or delay access to medicine for people in other countries.
- AFFORDABLE ACCESS: Drug corporations and their lobbyists have rigged the rules of the pharmaceutical industry in order to drive up profits, putting medicines out of reach for millions of people. Drug company price gouging puts the greatest pressure on the people who can least afford to bear the brunt of high prices, making health and economic disparities even worse. Solutions to the affordable medicine crisis must ensure no one gets left behind by toppling barriers that systematically deny people access to medicines they need.
- MAKING THE SYSTEM FAIR: We must curb drug corporations’ power to extract profits at the expense of people’s health by harnessing the government’s power to improve patients’ lives. This requires a range of concrete steps that re-write the rules to rein in drug corporations’ monopoly power to price gouge; that requires the drug industry to negotiate fair prices with government; and that holds corporations accountable for practices that directly and indirectly keep prices unjustifiably high.
- PUTTING PUBLIC GOOD AHEAD OF CORPORATE PROFIT: We, as taxpayers help foot the bill for a substantial amount of drug research, development and innovation, for drug purchasing through Medicare, Medicaid, and the Veterans Administration and for marketing, legal and patent protections for drug corporations. We must ensure government funding and incentives prioritize medical breakthroughs that most serve the public good rather than those that primarily extend monopolies and increase corporate profits. Everyone wants proven treatments and life-saving innovations, but prescription drugs are useless to people who can’t afford them. We must change the system to make sure everyone can benefit from our shared public investment in new drug research and development by ensuring that medicines are affordable and accessible to everyone.