NEWS: Sanders Report Details How Trump Broke Promises to Patients, Cut $561 Million from Lifesaving Research While Failing to Lower Prescription Drug Prices

WASHINGTON, Feb. 3 - Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP), today released a new report documenting how the Trump administration has broken its promises to American patients by gutting medical research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) while failing to lower prescription drug prices and engaging in political censorship. The report documents the defunding of more than 300 clinical trials, including research on pediatric brain tumors, dementia, Alzheimer's, diabetes and heart disease.

"Trump promised to defeat childhood cancer. Trump promised to end chronic disease. Trump promised to lower prescription drug prices. He has done none of these things," Sanders said. "Instead, Trump has terminated hundreds of millions of dollars in cancer, Alzheimer's, diabetes, and heart disease research. He has abandoned patients in clinical trials. And he has done nothing to lower the outrageous prices Americans pay for the drugs their own tax dollars helped create."

The report analyzes NIH data and draws from interviews with federal scientists, researchers and workers. It finds that NIH has terminated or frozen at least $561 million in research on four of the leading causes of death in America, including:

• $273 million for cancer research (116 grants)
• $111 million for heart disease research (71 grants)
• $94 million for Alzheimer's research (65 grants)
• $83 million for diabetes research (68 grants)

While Trump claims to support "gold standard science," his administration is using a list of banned words to decide which research gets funded, including apartheid, adolescent, COVID, climate change, inequity and natural disasters.

The report further documents how Trump has failed to lower prescription drug prices for medicines developed with taxpayer-funded NIH research. The report finds that every single drug invented with help from NIH scientists is sold at a lower price in other countries than in the United States. For example:

• Gilead charges Americans $504,000 for the cancer drug Yescarta, while that same drug costs $377,000 in the United Kingdom, $266,000 in Germany and $182,000 in Japan.
• Johnson & Johnson charges Americans $57,000 per year for the HIV drug Symtuza, while that same drug costs $11,000 in the United Kingdom, $9,000 in Germany and just $8,900 in Japan.
• Bristol Myers Squibb charges Americans $544,000 for the cancer drug Abecma while that same drug costs just $394,000 in Canada.

"The American people are sick and tired of paying, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs," Sanders concluded. "We need real action to take on the greed of the pharmaceutical industry and substantially reduce the cost of prescription drugs for all Americans, not more lies and phony press releases from President Trump and his administration."

Read the report here.

• Print
• Email
• Share
• Tweet