Hoosiers living with Type 1 diabetes today delivered to the Indiana General Assembly a petition signed by over 500 persons demanding that the House Public Health Committee hear a bill to establish a study committee on rising prescription drug prices.
The petition was delivered to House of Representatives Public Health Committee Chair Rep. Cindy Kirchofer and all of the committee members. Hoosiers who have struggled to afford prescription medicines, in particular insulin, are available for interviews, as are Hoosier physicians who see patients who struggle with medicines’ cost.
This article by PFAM coordinator Fran Quigley was published in the Health and Human Rights Journal. To see the article at its original source, with reference sources hyperlinked, click here.
PFAM will be attending Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law Faculty Book Talk. JOIN US. For details, see below or follow the link.
Network, a Catholic social justice lobby group, published a letter signed by 7,000 nuns! The letter states that the "BCRA would be the most harmful legislation for American families in our lifetimes, and it goes against our Catholic faith teaching."
Good news... Now you can do both at the same time! By purchasing a copy of Prescription for the People: An Activist's Guide to Making Medicine Affordable for All (The Culture and Politics of Health Care Work), you can do both at the same time. Author of the book, Fran Quigley, is donating all of his author proceeds to us at People of Faith for Access to Medicine. We are so excited, thank you Fran!
In September, Allergen, the pharmaceutical company that produces Restasis, announced that it would extend its for the dry-eye medicine patent by selling the patent to the Saint Regis Mohawk, a Native American Tribe. The tribe, located in upstate New York, would receive $13.75 million and claim sovereign immunity so that Allergen could avoid a patent challenge brought by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
Just wanted to take a moment to acknowledge that the Indianapolis Business Journal article covering skyrocketing Eli Lilly & Company insulin prices and the #insulin4all demonstration made the front page of the Indianapolis Business Journal! We are so excited.
This past week we learned of another person dying because they could not afford their insulin. Enough is enough. No person should have to die because they cannot afford essential medicines.
Save the date! PFAM is partnering with T1International and Public Citizen, to put on a demonstration prompting Eli Lilly, producer of Humalog insulin to answer the following asks...
On July 18, 2017, the New York Times published PFAM founder, Fran Quigley, in its opinion page entitled "Fixes". In the article, Quigley covers the Zika virus, neglected diseases, and what is being done to alter the status quo. Below is a couple of snippets, but follow this link to read the rest of the article!
If you or someone you know is dealing with the challenge of affording prescription medicines, People of Faith for Access to Medicines would like to hear your story.
In 2016, Mylan, creator of the Epipen – yes, the same company that pushed the price of a two-pack of EpiPens to $609, rewarded chairman and former CEO, Robert Coury, with a whopping $98 million. As a result, certain pension funds are not very happy...
See the video folks, the President has said it himself. Although this is a clip from the campaign trail, Donald Trump, as a presidential candidate, called out the pharmaceutical industry. Mr. President, it's been almost half a year into your term as President and Pharma is still getting away with murder.
Last week, PFAM submitted a formal comment to the Federal Register on the President Donald J. Trump Administration's plan to renegotiate NAFTA. PFAM's major concern is that reopening of NAFTA could lead to more extended monopolies on medicines. Check out the comment here.
To most people in the developed world, the mere mention of the word, "tuberculosis" (or TB), brings to mind 18th Century Europe, the white plague, and movie characters with coughing fits.
In 1946 the World Health Organization (WHO) first declared health as a social right in its constitution... and in 1948, access to essential medicine was included in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights!
In her final address to the World Health Assembly as Director-General of the WHO, Dr. Margaret Chan identified access to medicines as the most contentious issue of her decade-long tenure. That struggle was engaged, she said, “especially when intellectual property and the patent system were perceived as barriers to both affordable prices and the development of new products for diseases of the poor.”
At first glance, it seems that clinical trials are the much-criticized pharmaceutical industry’s best contribution to the medicines process. The industry leans on governments to fund early-stage research, then claims the patent rights to the most promising fruits of that research.
Drug prices are skyrocketing in the US, and eye-watering Big Pharma profits are rising right along with them. With millions of Americans skipping medicine doses due to cost, widespread public frustration has spurred lawmakers to propose some good ideas for addressing the crisis.
People of Faith for Access to Medicines, PFAM, was recognized this week as the “NGO in the Spotlight” by the advocacy group Prescription Justice.