Drug prices 'not jus­ti­fied' by phar­ma R&D spend­ing, new study says

Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies are charg­ing too much for their drugs for what they spend on R&D, a group of re­searchers with the med­ical jour­nal The BMJ said in a study pub­lished to­day.

The re­searchers ques­tion the claim that high drug prices are need­ed to sus­tain valu­able in­no­va­tion by an­a­lyz­ing pub­licly avail­able fi­nan­cial re­ports from 1999 to 2018 at the 15 largest bio­phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies.

Ac­cord­ing to the pa­per, com­pa­nies spent more on sell­ing, gen­er­al, and ad­min­is­tra­tive ac­tiv­i­ties, in­clud­ing mar­ket­ing, than on R&D — every year from 1999 to 2018.

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