WASHINGTON, D.C. — Patients For Affordable Drugs Now launched another TV ad this week as part of its campaign to ensure patient voices are heard in the midst of multiple million-dollar Big Pharma campaigns full of lies and scare tactics. The new ad features Lynn Scarfuto, a retired nurse and cancer patient, and calls on Congress to let Medicare negotiate lower drug prices. The new ad will run in Washington, D.C., during the month of September and is part of P4ADNow’s seven-figure campaign, which includes an additional TV ad, digital ads running across a variety of websites and news outlets, and congressional outreach, where patient advocates contact their members of Congress to demand passage of legislation to allow Medicare to negotiate.

“The medicine I depend on is priced at nearly $15,000 every month. What happens to millions of Americans like me who can’t afford the drugs we so desperately need?” Scarfuto, from Herkimer, N.Y., asks in the ad. “Congress, the opportunity to act is now.”

Watch the full ad here. 

Yesterday, the House Ways And Means Committee voted to advance H.R. 3, a comprehensive bill that allows Medicare to negotiate lower prices, as part of the reconciliation package. The Senate Finance Committee is also currently drafting legislation that will allow Medicare to negotiate, which would deliver on the president’s Build Back Better plan under rules of reconciliation.

“Legislation to allow Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices is the most popular provision in the president’s Build Back Better plan, with nearly 9 in 10 voters supporting the proposal,” said David Mitchell, a patient with incurable blood cancer whose drugs carry a list price of more than $900,000 per year and founder of Patients For Affordable Drugs Now. “Americans understand that despite Big Pharma claims, lower prices and innovation can co-exist and drug company scare tactics won’t work.”

The ad complements Patients For Affordable Drugs Now’s fact check and video that break down false claims in pharma-funded ads, including misleading claims about the implications of repealing the non-interference clause and direct Medicare negotiation. All of P4ADNow’s recent ads can be found here. 

Patients For Affordable Drugs Now is the only independent national patient organization focused exclusively on policy changes to lower prescription drug prices. It does not accept funding from any organizations that profit from the development or distribution of prescription drugs.
 
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