Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., detailed his decades-long battle with the pharmaceutical industry, telling Newsmax on Thursday that "Americans are getting ripped off" by big pharma paying the "highest prices in the world" for prescription drugs.
Sanders took aim at the diabetes drug Ozempic, which at a more affordable price in the U.S. could save 40,000 lives per year, Sanders said on “The Record With Greta Van Susteren.”
"We are paying by far the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs," said Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Democrats in the Senate. "I've taken trips of Americans over the Canadian border where in some cases we have bought the same exact product for one-tenth of the price in Canada compared to the United States. And in fact, prices around the world are even less expensive than in Canada.
"So we're getting ripped off. And our goal now is to take on the pharmaceutical industry and very simply tell them, 'Hey, don't charge us prices in America that are higher than the people in other countries,'" he told Van Susteren.
One egregious example is Ozempic, a Type 2 diabetes drug that goes for $59 in Germany but "we pay close to $1,000," Sanders said, dismissing the idea of Ozempic as a vanity drug for people who want to lose weight.
"That may be the case for some people, but let’s be clear: The reality is that we have a diabetes epidemic in America, and we have an obesity epidemic. And this is not, you know, somebody getting into a bikini," Sanders said. "When you are overweight, you have a whole bunch of different ailments that end up not only leading to death and suffering but cost the healthcare system hundreds of billions of dollars."
Sanders said he’s been told by scientists "that if we could make Ozempic affordable, we could save some 40,000 lives every single year. And that is our goal."
"So, we are working right now to bring that price down as low as we can," Sanders said.
However, a major hurdle for Sanders and lawmakers is that big pharma spent $379 million on lobbying on Capitol Hill last year.
"They are, next to Wall Street, the most powerful political force in the country," Sanders said. "Believe it or not, and this is true: they have 1,800 well-paid lobbyists here in Washington to make sure that Democrats and Republicans do nothing, do nothing to protect the American people."
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