Sanders: I'm very disappointed in the vote today on prescription drugs ...
I get that the pharmaceutical industry owns the Republican Party and that no Republican voted for this bill, but there is no excuse for every Democrat not supporting it.
The good news is that the full Congress must and will do far better. At a time when the drug companies are charging us by far the highest prices in the world, Congress must demand that Medicare negotiate prices with this extremely greedy and powerful industry.
Year after year, the pharmaceutical industry makes extraordinary profits and provides their CEOs with obscenely high compensation packages.
Meanwhile, one out of five Americans cannot afford the prescriptions their doctors write, and thousands die each year because they lack the money to buy the medicine they need.
The pharmaceutical industry has spent over $4.5 billion on lobbying and campaign contributions over the past 20 years and has hired some 1,200 lobbyists to get Congress to do its bidding. They are the most powerful industry on Capitol Hill.
Nonetheless, the American people are demanding that Congress stand up to them and finally lower the outrageous price of prescription drugs by requiring Medicare to negotiate with the pharmaceutical industry.
Now is the time for Congress to show courage and stand up to the greed of the pharmaceutical industry. The American people will not accept surrender.
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Neither are psoriasis, eczema, ibs, migraines, metastatic breadth cancer, or tardive dyskinesia.
Every day, I see ads for drugs to treat all of those maladies, NONE of which are made up. Complain about the drug companies and their ads all you want, but they know exactly what conditions people suffer from and need help with.
The drugs that don't have generics are ones that are so new that no one else is being allowed to make and market generic versions yet. That is why they're so heavily advertised; the makers of those drugs want to sell as much product as they can while they can still control the market and the price. When the generic versions are on the market, the drug makers will be running advertising for newer drugs that they can sell for big bucks. And the cycle goes on and on.
It sucks, a lot, but that doesn't mean there aren't real people with real health conditions that need those drugs to alleviate real suffering. That is actually why big pharma gets away with this stuff: they point to all the real people who benefit from the development of new drugs and claim they have to charge through the nose for drugs to cover the cost of R&D. Of course, what they mean is that they like to charge through the nose for drugs to cover the cost of R&D AND clear massive profits. 
