“The U.S. has – by far – the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs,” Sanders said. “The simple fact is that the prices of patent medicines are a significant barrier to access to health for millions of uninsured and underinsured Americans and people die because of it.”
~Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT)
Bernie Sanders has proposed a new piece of legislation that would provide a $3 billion annual prize for those companies or individuals who are finding treatments or cures to the AIDS epidemic. It currently costs $25,000 to purchase a year’s worth of Atripla treatments (approved in the FDA in 2006) – a drug mixture commonly used to treat AIDS when the generic version which is approved by the FDA and sold overseas but not legally available in the U.S. can be purchased for less than $200 per patient per year. Drug companies need an incentive to produce life saving drugs….but people shouldn’t have to die waiting for the patent to expire so they can afford it. Senator Sanders produces that incentive and gives people an opportunity to actually LIVE.
His office distributed this press release – in full HERE:
Sen. Bernie Sanders on Tuesday called for eliminating legal monopolies that make HIV/AIDS medicine so expensive in the United States that many patients cannot afford treatment and die.
Sanders cited the example of Atripla, the trade name for a combination drug to treat HIV infection. In the United States, the medicine costs more than $25,000 per person per year. The generic version of the same treatment, approved by the Food and Drug Administration but unavailable for sale in the U.S., costs less than $200 per patient per year.
The legislation would more than pay for itself. Experts estimate that the nearly $10 billion U.S. market for AIDS drugs could be supplied at generic prices for 10 percent of that figure. So even after spending $3 billion per year on the prize fund and $1 billion on the products, there will be a huge overall savings for taxpayers and consumers.
You can find the text of the bill S.1138 HERE.
