US Senator calls on six drug majors to explain international price disparities

23 March 2010

US Senator Herb Kohl (Democrat, Wisconsin), Chairman of the Special Committee on Aging, last week sent letters to six leading pharmaceutical firms making the 12 most-prescribed drugs in the USA, asking them to explain why Americans pay an average of twice as much for prescription drugs as other industrialized nations.

According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the USA spends an average of $878 per person on prescription drugs, while the average for other industrialized countries is $446, he pointed out.

'Americans pay, on average, twice as much as people in other industrialized countries,' Senator Kohl states in the letter, adding: 'While I firmly believe that drug quality should not be sacrificed for cost, the large discrepancies in the cost of identical drugs cannot be explained by differences in production or manufacturing.'

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