In 2025, AbbVie cut its research and development budget by 29% — the steepest R&D cut of any major pharmaceutical company that year. In the same year, AbbVie's CEO received a 75% pay raise, bringing his total compensation to $32.5 million. Same company. Same year. Same pool of capital.

That's where Episode 9 starts. And it only gets more specific from there.

Rob Burgess follows the money through the full 2025 financial picture for the 16 largest pharmaceutical companies — the advertising budgets, the executive compensation structures, the shareholder returns, the R&D cuts, and the 22,000 jobs eliminated — and then audits the decade of leadership at PhRMA, the industry's most powerful lobbying organization, that produced these numbers. Every argument the industry makes in defense of its behavior gets examined against the data. None of them hold.

In this episode:

• AbbVie: 75% CEO pay raise, 29% R&D cut, workers laid off — all in the same year
• The 16 largest pharma companies combined cut $5.9 billion from research in 2025 while returning $97 billion to shareholders
• $9 billion in direct-to-consumer advertising in 2025 — up from $6 billion in 2020 — and how the 1997 FDA rule change made it all possible
• Why Trump's September 2025 executive order on misleading drug ads and the FDA's enforcement crackdown are the right moves — and why the rulemaking needs to be codified into law
• How equity-based CEO compensation is structurally designed to reward price increases over research investment
• A decade-long audit of PhRMA's leadership: $305 million in lobbying, drug spending up 60%, advertising tripled, the revolving door kept spinning
• The four industry arguments for high prices, examined one by one against 2025 data
• Three reforms that would change the system's incentives without telling a single company to stop innovating

The bottom line: The innovation argument is not a fact. It's a cover story. The financial filings say so. A decade of data says so. AbbVie says so with every allocation decision it made in 2025.

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#DrugPricing #HealthcareReform #BigPharmaExposed #PharmaGreed #CorruptionWatch

On December 19th, 2025, 14 pharmaceutical companies shook President Trump's hand and promised most favored nation pricing. The president called it the greatest victory for patient affordability in the history of American health care. Twelve days later, those same companies raised prices on 872 drugs. Then they launched 23 new drugs at an average price of $353,000 a year.

In Episode 8, Rob Burgess covers two stories that belong together. First: what actually happened to Trump's MFN deals — the price hikes, the new drug launch prices, and the $177 billion in combined profit that proves the "we need high prices to innovate" argument is a lie. Then: cancer drug pricing specifically, because 51% of American cancer patients go into debt paying for treatment, and the data says the prices have nothing to do with how well the drugs work.

In this episode:

• 872 drug price hikes in the first two weeks of January — from companies that had just signed MFN deals at the White House
• 23 new drugs launched by MFN deal signatories at an average price of $353,000 a year — one launched at $389,100 in the US, $37,900 in Japan
• $177 billion in combined profit, $97 billion back to shareholders, $34 billion in stock buybacks — from companies claiming they need high prices to survive
• Why the MFN deals failed: voluntary agreements without statutory enforcement are not agreements, they're handshakes
• 51% of American cancer patients go into debt paying for treatment — and peer-reviewed research finds no meaningful correlation between cancer drug prices and how well those drugs work
• Keytruda: $29.5 billion in revenue, dosing questions experts say could cut costs significantly, and a patent fortress extending to 2042
• Pharma increased cancer drug advertising by 43% while cutting R&D by 29% — in the same year
• The EPIC Act: pharma's current lobbying push to delay Medicare price negotiation on cancer drugs by four years

The bottom line: This is not a negotiating fight. You do not negotiate your way to victory with an industry that raises prices on 872 drugs twelve days after shaking the president's hand. You legislate. Codify MFN pricing. Pass the bill.

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#DrugPricing #HealthcareReform #BigPharmaExposed #PharmaGreed #CorruptionWatch

Every time a drug's patent is about to expire — every time competition is about to show up and prices are about to fall — Big Pharma runs the same play. It looks different each time. But the architecture is always identical. In Episode 7, Rob Burgess walks through that playbook move by move, using the two biggest-selling drugs in pharmaceutical history to show exactly how it works.

First: Humira. The best-selling drug on earth. Its core patent expired in 2016. Biosimilar competition didn't arrive until 2023. The six-year delay cost American patients $75 billion. Rob walks through every move that made it happen — 250 patents, nine pay-for-delay settlements, and a product switch timed to strand the competition before it arrived. All of it documented by the company's own internal records and a three-year congressional investigation.

Then: Keytruda. Merck's cancer drug. $29.5 billion in revenue last year. Core patent expires in 2028. Nearly 300 patent applications already filed. A new subcutaneous formulation launched in 2025 with patents extending to 2042. And a CEO who told investors the whole point is to turn a patent cliff into — his words — more of a hill.

In this episode:

• The four moves of the patent abuse playbook: patent thickets, pay-for-delay, product hopping, and FDA citizen petition abuse
• How 250 patents and nine pay-for-delay settlements kept Humira competition off the market for six years after its core patent expired
• The $75 billion that delay cost American patients — documented in the company's own internal projections
• How Merck is running the same play on Keytruda right now, in real time, with a 2028 patent cliff and patents extending to 2042
• The Merck CEO quote that confirms the strategy — said directly to investors in a recorded statement
• Why $3.5 billion a year flows out of American patients' pockets through pay-for-delay alone, every single year
• Three bipartisan bills already written, already introduced, one passed the Senate unanimously — and why none of them have moved

The bottom line: This is not a side issue. It is a systematic, documented, legally sophisticated strategy to deny Americans the benefits of a free market they were promised. The Senate voted unanimously to stop it. The House needs to act.

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#BustBigPharma #Humira #Keytruda #PatentThicket #DrugPricing #BigPharma #PharmaReform #MAHA #MakeAmericaHealthyAgain #PayForDelay #ProductHopping #DrugPriceReform #PrescriptionDrugPrices #AmericansForPharmaReform

President Trump got 16 of America's largest pharmaceutical companies to the table. He applied real pressure, extracted public commitments on drug pricing that no previous administration had managed to get, and announced the deals from the White House. It should have been a historic win for American patients.

Then the SEC filings came out.

In Episode 6, Rob Burgess walks through what those 16 companies told their shareholders — in legally binding documents where they cannot misrepresent material fact — about what they actually agreed to. The gap between the public announcement and the private disclosure is what this episode is about.

In this episode:

• What the MFN deals actually required — and what companies committed to publicly vs. what they disclosed to investors
• Why Merck and Sanofi's SEC filings describe these as three-year deals — not the permanent reform the announcement suggested
• How the pricing provisions cover Medicaid only, leaving two thirds of Americans with private insurance untouched
• The Sanofi clause: a company that shook the president's hand then told shareholders it reserves the right to withhold drugs from American markets if pricing terms are "unacceptable"
• Why Eli Lilly and Pfizer's own filings acknowledge binding final agreements hadn't been signed when the deals were announced
• How pharma accepted three-year voluntary deals while their lawyers work to kill the longer mandatory Medicare programs in court
• Four specific things Congress and the administration should do right now — and why codification is the only thing Big Pharma is actually afraid of

The bottom line: This episode is not an argument against President Trump's drug pricing agenda. It's an argument for taking it further. The president started something real. The SEC filings show exactly how Big Pharma is planning to escape it. The answer is codification — permanent, enforceable, comprehensive law that doesn't expire in three years.

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#BustBigPharma #DrugPricing #MostFavoredNation #BigPharma #PharmaReform #MAHA #MakeAmericaHealthyAgain #Trump #DrugPriceReform #SECFilings #Codification #PrescriptionDrugPrices #AmericansForPharmaReform

Big Pharma has one argument they wheel out every single time anyone tries to hold them accountable. Touch our prices and you'll kill innovation. It sounds compelling. It's made legislators flinch for decades. It's made ordinary Americans hesitate. And in Episode 5 of Bust Big Pharma, Rob Burgess runs it through the data — study by study, number by number, company by company.

The results are not what the industry would like you to see.

This episode is the most research-dense of the series so far. Rob pulls from peer-reviewed studies in the British Medical Journal and the Journal of the American Medical Association, a decade of FDA approval data, and the industry's own audited financial filings to build a case that the innovation argument isn't a fact. It's a defense. And it doesn't hold up.

In this episode:

• The 15 largest drug companies spent $800 billion more on marketing than on R&D over 20 years — from their own financial filings
• Drug prices have no meaningful correlation to what those drugs cost to develop — peer-reviewed, Journal of the American Medical Association
• Cancer drug prices have no meaningful correlation to how well those drugs actually work — same journal
• 60% of genuinely new drugs are discovered at small, unprofitable startups — not at the companies running the lobbying campaigns
• The Humira case study: $42 billion in price increases. Six new drugs in a decade. 45 times less efficient than the industry average
• Why pharma's financial incentives are actively steering R&D away from diabetes and heart disease and toward ultra-high-priced rare disease drugs
• Where pharmaceutical innovation actually comes from — and why American taxpayers fund the first risk every single time
• The one regulatory reform that turbocharged AIDS and cancer drug development in the 1980s — and why expanding it is a conservative, market-based solution

The bottom line: This is not an innovation system. It's a pricing system with an innovation story attached to it. The data says so. Their own books say so. And the American people deserve to know.

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#BustBigPharma #DrugPricing #PharmaceuticalIndustry #BigPharma #PharmaReform #MAHA #MakeAmericaHealthyAgain #DrugPriceReform #Innovation #RFKJr #Humira #OrphanDrugs #PrescriptionDrugPrices #AmericansForPharmaReform

The FDA is supposed to be your watchdog. The agency that stands between you and an industry that, left unchecked, will prioritize profits over your safety. So what happens when the watchdog goes to work for the industry it was supposed to be watching?

In Episode 4, Rob Burgess names names. Three of them. Patrizia Cavazzoni ran the FDA's drug approval center for years — then left for Pfizer as Chief Medical Officer. Peter Marks spent nine years as the FDA's top vaccine regulator — then landed at Eli Lilly as Senior Vice President. Scott Gottlieb ran the entire FDA — then joined Pfizer's board of directors within months of leaving. Rob breaks down what each of them knew, what that knowledge is worth, and why the current law allows all of it.

In this episode:

• How the FDA actually works — and why the people running it hold enormous power over the entire pharmaceutical industry
• Patrizia Cavazzoni: eight years at Pfizer, then head of FDA drug approvals, then back to Pfizer as CMO
• Peter Marks: nine years overseeing FDA vaccine approvals, then Senior VP at Eli Lilly — alongside his former deputy
• Scott Gottlieb: ran the whole FDA, joined Pfizer's board within months, and still appears in the press as a "neutral" voice on drug policy
• Why the FDA's funding structure — hundreds of millions in fees paid directly by pharma — creates a conflict of interest baked into the system
• Why this is a conservative issue, not a progressive one — and the difference between regulation and regulatory capture
• Four specific reforms that would actually fix it: longer cooling off periods, a ban on board service, mandatory public disclosure, and enforceable recusal

The bottom line: The people running America's drug approval process are one year away from going to work for the companies that want drugs to be expensive. That's not America First. That's industry first.

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One drug. One molecule. 154 patents. That's not a typo — and in Episode 3 of Bust Big Pharma, Rob Burgess explains exactly what it means for your pharmacy bill.

Ozempic is the most talked-about drug in America right now. But behind the celebrity endorsements and the glossy TV ads is a story most people never hear: how Novo Nordisk built a legal fortress around a single molecule to keep cheaper competition off the market for years — and how much that delay is worth to them. The answer is $166 billion. Rob breaks down the patent thicketing playbook, why the GLP-1 market changes everything, and how Most Favored Nation pricing is the policy that Big Pharma is actually scared of.

In this episode:

• What a patent thicket is — and why 154 patents around one drug should make every American angry
• The $166 billion Novo Nordisk stands to collect by keeping generics out until 2031
• Why the GLP-1 market is projected to hit $100 billion a year — and what companies will do to protect that
• How real competition would drop prices 50-90% — and why it's being blocked
• Why Americans pay $900-$1,300 a month for drugs that cost a fraction of that overseas
• Most Favored Nation pricing explained — and why Big Pharma fought it so hard

The bottom line: This isn't just an Ozempic story. It's a playbook. And once you see how it works, you start seeing it everywhere.

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Big Pharma has so much money, they don't just buy politicians — they rent both parties. That's not a conspiracy theory. That's a quote from RFK Jr., and it's exactly what Republican strategist Chris Faulkner breaks down in this episode of Bust Big Pharma.

Rob Burgess sits down with Chris — a veteran political consultant who joined the Bust Big Pharma bus tour across the Southeast — to talk about why Congress won't act on drug pricing, what the 2026 midterms mean for pharma reform, and how everyday Americans can actually move the needle.

In this episode:

• Why Congress hesitates to codify Most Favored Nation pricing — and what's really behind the resistance
• How pharmaceutical companies spend 70–80% of ad dollars on some TV networks, and what that means for the news you're watching
• The three polling numbers every voter should know: 80%, 75%, 72%
• Why drug pricing is the ultimate 2026 wedge issue — and how candidates should be talking about it
• What a Republican strategist tells his clients about running against Big Pharma
• The Bernie Sanders moment that exposed Novo Nordisk's profit margin in real time
• Why dumping pharma stocks publicly might be the most effective form of civic activism right now

The bottom line: This isn't a left issue or a right issue. When 80% of Americans support Most Favored Nation pricing and 72% say they'd vote against a candidate who takes pharma money, you're not in ideological territory anymore. You're in mandate territory.

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