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drug prices
Report Exposes Big Pharma Front Groups Posing as Patient Advocates
"When your board is stacked with industry insiders, your primary funding comes from pharma, and your talking points mirror those of drug lobbyists, you're not a patient advocacy organization—you're a PR operation."
May 19, 2025
A report published Monday reveals that a number of organizations claiming to represent the interests of patients are actually pharmaceutical industry front groups working against efforts to bring down drug costs in the United States, including by lobbying the Trump administration to scale back Medicare price negotiations.
The new analysis by Patients for Affordable Drugs Now (P4AD), which stressed that it doesn't take money from organizations that profit from the production or distribution of prescription medications, spotlights six groups: the Alliance for Aging Research, the American Action Forum, the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest, the Council for Affordable Health Coverage, the Pacific Research Institute, and Seniors 4 Better Care.
The featured organizations, according to P4AD, "are posing as independent patient or policy groups while acting as mouthpieces for the drug industry's agenda—all while raking in pharma cash, fighting Medicare negotiation, and pushing misleading claims to block reforms."
Seniors 4 Better Care, for instance, is a shell group of the American Prosperity Alliance, the president of which "has a history of lobbying for the healthcare industry, including for organizations at the Healthcare Association of New York and insurance providers such as MVP Healthcare," P4AD's report observes.
"The group's treasurer, Parker Hamilton Poling, is a former lobbyist for pharmaceutical companies like Roche and Cencora," the report notes. "Brian Berry, the organization's secretary, also has a history of lobbying for Chinese biotech companies like Complete Genomics."
Earlier this year, Seniors 4 Better Care bankrolled an ad that directly urged President Donald Trump to end the "pill penalty," a label the pharmaceutical industry has used to describe the treatment of small-molecule prescription drugs under the Inflation Reduction Act's Medicare price negotiation provisions.
Last month, in a major gift to Big Pharma and industry lobbyists, Trump signed an executive order aimed at delaying Medicare negotiations for small-molecule drugs, which represent 90% of prescription medicines currently in circulation.
Another group highlighted in P4AD's report is the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest (CMPI), which describes itself as "a nonprofit, nonpartisan research and educational organization that seeks to advance the discussion and development of patient-centered healthcare."
P4AD notes that "every single member" of the organization's board has ties to the pharmaceutical industry. Peter Pitts, CMPI's president and co-founder, "primarily worked at firms hired by the pharmaceutical industry following an 18-month stint at the Food and Drug Administration," P4AD's report states.
"While working at major firms, such as Porter Novelli, Pitts retained his role at CMPI and insisted it was not a conflict of interest," the report continues. "He also currently teaches at the University of Paris, Descartes School of Medicine, a department that is funded by AstraZeneca."
Merith Basey, P4AD's executive director, said that "when your board is stacked with industry insiders, your primary funding comes from pharma, and your talking points mirror those of drug lobbyists, you're not a patient advocacy organization—you're a PR operation."
"Polling shows that Americans are aware that pharmaceutical corporations are the primary drivers of high drug prices, which is why the industry funds front groups to mislead the public and protect its bottom line," said Basey. "Patients and policymakers deserve to know whose interests these groups truly represent."
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Sanders, Democrats Call Trump's Bluff on Drug Price Executive Order
"If Trump is serious," said Sen. Bernie Sanders, "he will support legislation I will soon be introducing to make sure we pay no more for prescription drugs than people in other major countries."
May 12, 2025
If U.S. President Donald Trump actually wants to curb out-of-control prescription drug prices, he'll throw his support behind legislative efforts instead of trying to do so unilaterally—an approach that's unlikely to survive legal challenges.
That was the message that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and congressional Democrats sent to the White House after Trump signed an executive order Monday aimed at pushing "pharmaceutical manufacturers to bring prices for American patients in line with comparably developed nations."
The order resembles an effort that a federal judge blocked during Trump's first term after the pharmaceutical industry mobilized against it.
Sanders, a longtime proponent of legislative action to address exorbitant medicine prices, said he agrees it is "an outrage that the American people pay, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs."
"As Trump well knows, his executive order will be thrown out by the courts," said Sanders. "If Trump is serious about making real change rather than just issuing a press release, he will support legislation I will soon be introducing to make sure we pay no more for prescription drugs than people in other major countries. If Republicans and Democrats come together on this legislation, we can get it passed in a few weeks."
If Trump is serious about making real change rather than just issuing a press release, he will support legislation I will introduce to ensure we pay no more for prescription drugs than people in other major countries. If we come together, we can get it passed in a few weeks.
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— Senator Bernie Sanders (@sanders.senate.gov) May 12, 2025 at 1:01 PM
Sanders and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) have previously teamed up on a bill that would end drugmakers' monopoly control over a medication and allow generic competition if it is priced higher in the U.S. than in other rich nations.
An analysis released last year by the RAND Corporation estimated that prescription drug prices in the U.S. are, on average, 2.78 times higher than prices in Canada, Germany, France, and other comparable countries.
Khanna wrote on social media that he supports Trump's "effort to ensure Americans do not pay more for drugs than those in other countries." But, like Sanders, Khanna warned the executive order is likely doomed to fail.
"Instead of an EO that will get challenged again by Big Pharma, why not work with Bernie Sanders and me to make this law," the California Democrat wrote.
The pharmaceutical industry has made its opposition to Trump's latest order clear. In a statement, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America CEO Stephen Ubl claimed that "importing foreign prices from socialist countries would be a bad deal for American patients and workers."
"It would mean less treatments and cures and would jeopardize the hundreds of billions our member companies are planning to invest in America," Ubl added, rehashing a common and false industry talking point.
"Donald Trump is all hat and no cattle when it comes to lowering the price of prescription drugs."
Since taking office, Trump has repeatedly claimed to support aggressive action to bring down drug prices while simultaneously working to roll back progress toward that goal. Last month, as Common Dreamsreported, Trump signed an executive order aimed at delaying Medicare price negotiations for a broad category of prescription drugs.
The price negotiations began during the Biden administration following Democratic lawmakers' passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, a law whose drug pricing provisions have so far withstood Big Pharma's legal onslaught.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said in response to the president's executive order that "Donald Trump is all hat and no cattle when it comes to lowering the price of prescription drugs."
"Trump spent his entire first term blathering about Big Pharma, but in the end he always backed down instead of fighting for American seniors and families," said Wyden. "Democrats took on Big Pharma and won by finally giving Medicare the power to negotiate lower drug prices on behalf of seniors and capping their out-of-pocket costs for expensive prescriptions. If Trump was serious about lowering drug prices, he would work with Congress to strengthen Medicare drug price negotiations, not just sign a piece of paper."
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'Trump Just Caved to Big Pharma—Again': New Order Aims to Delay Drug Price Negotiations
"Extending negotiation delay periods is nothing but a total capitulation to the demands of drug corporation lobbyists," said one advocate.
Apr 16, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order that aims to delay Medicare negotiations for a broad category of prescription drugs, handing the deep-pocketed pharmaceutical industry a major win as it lobbies aggressively against efforts to rein in its pricing power.
Trump's order, titled "Lowering Drug Prices by Once Again Putting Americans First," instructs Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to work with Congress to "modify" the Medicare drug price negotiation program that was established under the Biden administration and has already yielded significant results despite pharma companies' best efforts to block it in court.
Specifically, Trump calls for a four-year extension of the period during which small-molecule prescription drugs are exempt from price negotiations with Medicare. Under the Inflation Reduction Act, small-molecule drugs—which are typically taken in pill form and represent 90% of medications currently in circulation—are not subject to the price negotiation process until at least nine years after their Food and Drug Administration approval date.
Steve Knievel, a drug policy advocate at Public Citizen, warned in a statement that by pushing back the negotiation date for many drugs, Trump's order could do the opposite of its stated goal, potentially reversing recent progress on an issue that has long plagued the United States.
"Further delaying Medicare drug price negotiation would lead to higher prices for patients and taxpayers, not lower ones," said Knievel. "Empowering Medicare to negotiate drug prices is the only significant legislative measure taken to address Big Pharma price gouging in the last 40 years. Now Trump proposes to undermine that singular achievement."
"Extending negotiation delay periods," Knievel added, "is nothing but a total capitulation to the demands of drug corporation lobbyists that want to continue to overcharge Medicare beneficiaries and taxpayers."
The advocacy group Protect Our Care said following the order that "Trump just caved to Big Pharma—again."
"His new executive order pushes to delay Medicare drug price negotiations, giving drug companies four extra years to price gouge seniors," said Protect Our Care. "The only winners here are the drug companies."
The president's new order echoes language that pharma lobbyists have used in their messaging against the Medicare price negotiation program, which the industry has opposed from the start.
The first section of the order states that the four-year difference between when small-molecule drugs and biologics are subject to Medicare price negotiations under current law is known as the "pill penalty"—a label that the pharmaceutical industry's largest lobbying organization has invoked repeatedly in its attacks on the Biden-era program.
The "pill penalty" language was also used in ads run by a group called Seniors 4 Better Care, which—as Sludge's Donald Shaw and David Moore revealed—"is not really a seniors group, but rather a front for a lobbyist-led shell group called the American Prosperity Alliance."
"Seniors 4 Better Care has ramped up its spending on ads that appear to be targeting Trump and his inner circle," Shaw and Moore reported in February.
Earlier this year, Republican lawmakers in the House and Senate—including leading recipients of pharmaceutical industry campaign cash—introduced legislation that would delay the price negotiation process for small-molecule drugs, signaling GOP support for the objectives laid out in Trump's executive order.
"Make no mistake," Patients for Affordable Drugs executive director Merith Basey said of the legislation, "this is yet another attempt by Big Pharma to rig the system in its favor—at the expense of patients."
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