Opinion

Beating Big Pharma

WEDNESDAY, MAY 26, marked a watershed moment in California, and maybe in the national drug-cost wars, but you might not have noticed. For the first time, the state legislature voted for the complete "OURx Bill of Rights" package of prescription drug reforms, putting Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger squarely on the spot to side either with citizens or with the drug companies that are loading him up with donations.

Last January the OURx coalition, led by Senior Action Network, California Alliance of Retired Americans, CALPIRG, Greenlining Institute, Consumers Union, and the California Labor Federation, met in a small room in Sacramento. The federal government had just failed, in the Medicare reform debacle, to defend citizens from high drug prices. There had to be something we could do in California, right now. From this emerged the OURx Bill of Rights, to guarantee information on safety, effectiveness, and price to every Californian, to end deceptive marketing practices that drive up costs, and to pull back the cloak of secrecy on drug pricing.

Over the past five months our lobbyists have worked hard – but it was average citizens, most of them seniors, who put themselves on the line and defeated the drug lobby. Despite more than half a million dollars in contributions, phony press events with bogus front groups, and all the suits at hand, the drug industry was, for the first time ever, beaten back.

The OURx coalition motto is simple – Big Pharma might buy votes in Sacramento, but it can't buy voters in the community. Local groups dug deep, spending thousands on chartering buses and organizing events in San Francisco, Sacramento, and around the state. Amazed legislators found respectful but determined groups of seniors an unaccustomed but increasingly regular presence in their offices, invited or not. Legislators in the districts were buttonholed at campaign events. All were forced to take a stand, on the side of California or on the side of drug companies.

This isn't about buying drugs in Canada or saving a few dollars. Most people don't want drugs from Canada; they want them from the corner pharmacy – just at Canadian prices. And because of high costs, as many as one in five San Franciscans skip medications; for people of color, it can be as high as 30 percent. Health and safety and lives are at stake. Deadly diseases such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease can only be controlled by drugs. Without medication, people start dying.

Big Pharma defends the highest prices in the world on a few imaginary grounds. Among them: (1) foreign drugs are unsafe, leaving aside the fact that drugs such as Lipitor or Viagra are all foreign-made and imported; and (2) science is expensive, leaving aside the fact that Big Pharma spends about 11 percent of revenues on R&D, versus 34 percent on marketing, advertising, and administration. It's not science but TV commercials that cost so much.

Of course, the true reason is the bottom line. Does the United States need the highest drug prices anywhere to develop not one or two but three erectile dysfunction drugs? And should high prices break the backs of low-income people, people of color, and seniors?

This week was just an opening round. The suits will be back with buckets of greenbacks. But maybe they have feet of clay, starting to crack. In March the San Francisco Board of Supervisors endorsed the OURx package; in May the city launched an official Web site to help buy drugs in Canada (www.sfdph.org/SFRx). And Senior Action Network provides the first in the nation's generics-comparison Web site (www.drugcompare.org). When people fight against powerful interests directly, in the halls of Sacramento, it makes all the difference.

We invite you to take action for lower drug prices June 8 at the BIO 2004 conference at Fourth and Howard Streets at noon. And remind all your state senators and assemblymembers and governor to vote for the entire OURx Bill of Rights package.