Hello friends,
I am pleased to share Overpatented, Overpriced: 2022, I-MAK’s newest report analysing the ten top selling drugs and exposing the scale of the patent abuse problem and its impact on U.S. prescription drug spending. As covered in NBC, Reuters, and The Pharma Letter, our findings demonstrate the immense need for policy change in the U.S. patent system.
Read the report here: OVERPATENTED, OVERPRICED, 2022
In addition to the report, we’ve created two first-of-their-kind resources that bring new and much-needed transparency to the patent system:
- The Drug Patent Book, a publicly accessible, user-friendly blueprint for comprehensive drug patent data on top ten selling drugs.
- America’s Top Selling Drugs page, a collection of relevant statistics including market dynamics, pricing and spending data, and patent information.
Over 1 in 4 Americans struggle to afford their high-cost prescription medicines. The public needs transparency and access to information about how drugmakers are using the patent system and how it is impacting Americans and their healthcare.
Best,
Tahir
Recent Work on COVID-19 Vaccine Equity
A global intellectual property waiver is still needed to decentralize manufacturing capability for COVID-19 vaccines, and should be expanded to include tests and treatments. I wrote about this with Dr. Aaron Kesselheim in Inquiry Health Journal.
My Co-ED Priti reflected on the inequitable response to COVID-19 in a conversation with Chelsea Clinton at last week’s Clinton Global Initiative convening. On the panel, Priti called out a central problem with our medicines system: “We still haven’t figured out how to shorten the time between when a drug hits the market and when it reaches people worldwide to save lives. These are man-made problems, not scientific ones.”