GAO re­port tracks the growth of an $89B drug R&D sec­tor as bio­phar­ma sales soared

Just how much does phar­ma re­al­ly pay for drug re­search and de­vel­op­ment, how does that ac­tu­al­ly stack up as a per­cent­age of sales and who cov­ers the bill for ba­sic drug re­search?

The US Gov­ern­ment Ac­count­abil­i­ty Of­fice (GAO) took that task on and came up with some in­trigu­ing num­bers that say a lot about the size of the R&D in­dus­try and some key un­der­ly­ing trends be­hind the spend. One fig­ure demon­strat­ing how per­son­al health­care spend­ing grew from 7% in the ’90s to 12%, al­most dou­bling in the process, al­so un­der­scores why drug pric­ing has be­come a hot po­lit­i­cal is­sue that shows no sign of wan­ing.

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