For some specific drugs the price differential is even more dramatic. A subsequent cost survey of the same medications found that American seniors pay 72 percent more than consumers in Canada, and 102 percent more than consumers in Mexico. With relatively small markups for prescription drugs, somewhere between 3 and 22 percent, pharmacists are not responsible for these high prescription drug prices. It is the large pharmaceutical companies, which make six times more profit on prescriptions than retail pharmacies, that drive up the prices. To offer bargain prices to their favored customers, they shift costs to those with the least financial resources and the most medical problems, often seniors.
Pharmaceuticals rank as the nation s number one industry in return on equity and return on assets.
The Prescription Drug Fairness for Seniors Act. Senators Edward Kennedy and Tim Johnson recently introduced a companion bill, S. 731. Our legislation does not fix drug prices. It does not require significant new federal expenditures. It uses the free market to give Medicare beneficiaries the same advantages that large HMOs and other bulk purchasers like the federal government receive.