Every year, taxpayers pay for at least $750 million worth of expensive pharmaceuticals that are simply thrown away, so Congress decided to assign the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to investigate.
What the NAS concluded was that Medicare should just stop tracking the cost of the drug waste altogether. What they didn’t say was that members of the investigative committee and the NAS itself have accepted millions of dollars in gifts from drug companies that have a direct interest in the government spending more money, not less, on pharmaceuticals.
Nearly $3 million came from Johnson & Johnson alone. J&J’s pharmaceutical products include vaccines and drugs for cardiovascular and pulmonary problems, to name a few. Another $1.1 million came from United Therapeutics Corp., a biotech that sells products for patients with chronic and life-threatening cardiovascular and infectious diseases.
Merck, Pfizer and AstraZeneca make up the next three drug makers that Kaiser said would be most interested in influencing the investigation. Bristol-Myers Squibb, AbbVie, Eli Lilly, GlaxoSmithKline and Novartis filled in the top 10 that would want to stop the drug-waste investigation.
SOURCE: Kaiser Health News August 12, 2021