Brad Reed is a staff writer for Common Dreams.
A report released Monday found that Big Pharma has continued raising prices on dozens of cancer drugs, despite President Donald Trump's repeated false claims that he and his administration have slashed drug prices by a mathematically impossible 600%.
The analysis, conducted by Patients for Affordable Drugs, found that pharmaceutical companies increased prices on 64 oncology drugs in the first weeks of 2026, with the vast majority of price hikes coming in above the rate of inflation.Patients for Affordable Drugs noted the heavy financial toll that paying for treatments takes on US cancer patients, and said the latest price increases would only exacerbate the crisis.'Cancer drugs are among the most expensive drugs on the market, costing $74,000 more on average than non-cancer drugs,' the group explained. 'More than 42% of cancer patients in the US fully depleted their savings within two years of diagnosis to cover their care. More than half of Americans with cancer go into debt because of the cost of their care.'Making matters worse, the group added, is that Big Pharma is heavily lobbying Congress to pass legislation that would further delay small molecule drugs, including 'widely used, high-cost cancer treatments,' from becoming eligible for Medicare price negotiations.Merith Basey, CEO of Patients for Affordable Drugs, stressed that the latest price increases were unacceptable given that 'cancer is a leading cause of death among American seniors, and the treatments patients rely on are already among the most expensive.''Yet as they continue to hike prices, the pharmaceutical industry is also working overtime to block reforms that would lower them,' added Basey, 'and patients are paying the price.'While the Patients for Affordable Drugs report focuses on cancer drugs, a December report from Reuters found that at least 350 branded medications are set for price hikes in 2026, including “vaccines against Covid, RSV, and shingles,” as well as the “blockbuster cancer treatment Ibrance.”The total projected number of drugs seeing price increases in 2026 is significantly higher than in 2025, when 3 Axis Advisors estimated that pharmaceutical companies raised prices on 250 medications. The median price increase for drugs in 2026 is projected at 4%, roughly the same as in 2025.All of these price increases have come despite Trump's false claims that he has lowered the prices of drugs to the point where pharmaceutical companies would actually be paying patients to take them.An analysis released last week by the Center for American Progress found that the president's TrumpRx initiative, which was created to purportedly offer Americans cheaper prescription drugs, offered genuinely lower prices on 'exactly one' of the 54 medications listed on its website.CAP also found that nearly one-third of the drugs available on the TrumpRx website have generic alternatives that were cheaper than what was being offered, and that the website made no mention of this.
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