The American pharmaceutical industry is certainly an outlier among developed countries. Americans face by far the highest out of pocket costs for prescription medications in comparison to every other OECD country, causing millions to ration their supplies of drugs. In particular, brand-name drugs, such as Xarelto, Enbrel, and Harvoni, are often magnitudes more expensive in the United States. And this divergence has shown a k-shaped trend over time, largely due to the pharmaceutical industry’s oligopoly over most prescription medications, as well as a lack of price controls in the United States. Thus, this leads to massive economic inefficiency for injured customers.

But is it even a free-market if Americans are legally required to consume Big Pharma’s products? Vaccine recommendations for children in the United States are far more comprehensive than most developed countries. Specifically, in 2024, 84 vaccine doses were recommended by the CDC before Trump’s second term for American children, more than twice as many as many European countries. These vaccines continue to be required in the United States for school entry, whereas many countries in Europe have no child vaccine mandates at all. Furthermore, the ability of Americans to make informed decisions about their health has been hampered due to vast social media censorship of dissent on vaccine policy, as well as vaccine producers’ redaction of key documents during the Covid-19 pandemic. So despite the United States being one of only two developed countries that allows paid advertising of prescription drugs, it appears that customers are not getting the full picture of what is being sold to them. 

Ever since the Covid-19 pandemic, American vaccine manufacturers such as Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and Moderna have made record profits, despite the failures of their vaccines to significantly reduce the spread of the virus. And as these vaccines produced massive adverse side effects ranging from myocarditis to blood clots and diabetes, they have only widened Big Pharma Corporations’ consumer base that will become dependent on them for blood thinners and insulin. This should not have come as a surprise due to Pfizer’s massive criminal fine that was handed to them for illegal marketing, and other pharmaceutical giants’, such as Purdue Pharma’s, role in the opioid epidemic. But as long as Big Pharma pours billions into our politicians’ electoral funds, structural reform of the industry that will allow us to catch up to every other developed country will require a long and tough battle.