Washington, D.C. – Today, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) revealed that Medicare will be missing out on $8.8 billion in savings over 10 years due to prescription drug pricing provisions in Donald Trump and Republicans’ tax bill.
In the GOP bill, big drug companies scored one of their biggest victories in years, putting new restrictions on when and what prescription drugs Medicare can negotiate. Many of the medications that would be exempted under the new loophole are some of the most profitable drugs on the market and treat conditions such as cancer and hypertension. Seniors who rely on these life-saving medications will now have to wait longer for relief or may not receive any at all.
The only reason to do this is to pad the profits of big drug companies, which are so profitable that they could lose $1 trillion in revenue over a decade and still be the most profitable industry in the world. Protect Our Care’s Greed Watch report found that the 25 drugs selected for Medicare negotiations brought in over $345 billion in revenue so far this year, while the 14 companies that manufacture these drugs raked in almost $82 billion in combined profits.
“Donald Trump and Republicans are selling out America’s seniors,” said Protect Our Care President Brad Woodhouse. “Instead of letting Medicare negotiate lower prices for more drugs, they carved out a loophole to protect the industry’s most profitable drugs. Not only does the GOP tax bill throw over 15 million Americans off their health care and hike costs for millions more, but it also forces older Americans to pay more for life-saving medicines while CEOs and billionaires line their pockets with more money than they know what to do with. This isn’t about helping lower costs – it’s about doing the bidding of big drug companies, and Trump and the GOP are all too happy to oblige.”
Background
The drugmakers who are raking in billions from Trump’s Big Pharma bailout pocketed an average of $72 billion in net profits and spent an average of $82 billion more on shareholder compensation than research and development since the launch of these drugs, all while collectively spending hundreds of millions lobbying to protect their egregious profits.
Republicans designed this bailout to carve out top-selling products from drug price negotiation, ensuring drug companies’ exorbitant profits remain untouched while seniors continue to be forced to choose between putting food on the table and affording the health care they need to survive.
The evidence is clear, these policies were never about innovation or orphan disease – they are about padding drug company profits:
Drug (Indication), Manufacturer
Global Revenue for Drug Since Launch
Company Net Profit Since Launch
Spending On Rewards For Shareholders Since Launch
Lobbying Spending Since Launch
Spending On R&D Since Launch
Estimated Gross Medicare Spending in 2024
Darzalex (treats blood cancer), Johnson and Johnson
$46 billion
$167 billion
$155 billion
$63 million
$123 billion
$5.6 billion
Keytruda* (treats breast, lung, kidney, skin, and GI cancers), Merck
$133 billion
$83 billion
$105 billion
$77 million
$141 billion
$13.5 billion
Opdivo* (treats GI and skin cancers), Bristol-Myers Squibb
$65 billion
$21 billion
$336 billion
$54 million
$85 billion
$4.7 billion
Yervoy (treats liver, lung, GI, and skin cancers), Bristol-Myers Squibb
$20 billion
$28 billion
$397 billion
$63 million
$96 billion
$993 million
Venclexta (treats leukemia and lymphoma), AbbVie
$11 billion
$62 billion
$96 billion
$58 million
$66 billion
$814 million
*Drug is the top revenue-generating product in the manufacturers’ portfolio.
Spending on rewards for shareholders includes company spending on stock buybacks and dividends since the launch of the drug.
The data on revenues, profits, and shareholder rewards comes from analysis of publicly available SEC filings through March 2025. Lobbying spending was obtained from opensecrets.org. Estimates of 2024 Medicare spending were obtained from WSJ/University of Washington.