Big Pharma fought drug pricing reform with record $7.5M dark money donation
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In August, the Department of Health and Human Services announced 10 drugs selected for the first round of Medicare price negotiations-a landmark effort established by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act to try to drag down the country's uniquely astronomical prescription drug prices.
Pharmaceutical companies publicly balked-and also sued-then eventually came to the table. But it was far from their first protest of the Democrat-led effort to reform drug pricing in the US, which pays far more for prescription drugs than other high-income countries.
In 2022, the pharmaceutical industry's top lobbying group, PhRMA, gave a record $7.5 million to the GOP-linked dark money group, American Action Network (AAN), which spent millions on advertising that year opposing drug pricing reforms, some of which made it into the Inflation Reduction Act.