Consumers blame pharmaceutical industry for high prescription costs

In a recent online survey of visitors to the Weiss Ratings Web site at www.WeissRatings.com, 42 percent of consumers polled blame pharmaceutical companies' excessive profits for high prescription drug costs. Another 23.3 percent cited expensive marketing, bringing the total number of respondents holding drug companies responsible for soaring prescription drug costs to nearly two-thirds.

The results of the online survey were based on voluntary responses from 1,834 individuals visiting the Web site.

Presented with the question, "What do you feel is the primary reason behind high U.S. prescription drug costs?," respondents were asked to vote once for one of six choices. Each choice, followed by the percentage of survey answers, is as follows:

42 percent drug companies padding their profits;

23.3 percent expensive marketing by drug companies;

19.3 percent expensive research and development costs;

10.5 percent high cost of lawsuits for defective drugs;

3.8 percent other; and

1.2 percent high demand due to consumer resistance against generics.

"Consumers continue to feel as though they are being taken advantage of by the pharmaceutical industry, which has obviously failed to adequately present its case for the high costs of prescription drugs," said Melissa Gannon, vice president of Weiss Ratings Inc.

Weiss Ratings issues safety ratings on more than 15,000 financial institutions, including life and health insurers, property and casualty insurers, HMOs and banks. Weiss also rates the risk-adjusted performance of more than 12,000 mutual funds and more than 8,000 stocks. Weiss Ratings receives no direct or indirect compensation from the companies it rates for issuing its ratings.

Revenues are derived strictly from sales of its products to consumers, institutions, businesses, libraries and governmental agencies.