Having served on the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Consumer Consortium years ago, I know these claims are true. I know that trials are designed to produce results favorable to manufacturers, and when the results are unfavorable they are hidden from physicians, the FDA and consumers until untoward events are too big to ignore.

I know that some medical journals, like many research docs, are funded by pharmaceutical companies, and that academic papers are often not as objective as we would wish.

Not even the Supreme Court seems to be on the consumer’s side. In 2013, by a 5 to 4 vote, the Court ruled that 80 percent of all drugs are exempt from legal liability.

Ironically, generic drugs account for 80 percent of all prescriptions written in America. And in 2013, federal prosecutors tried to get the Supreme Court to end “pay for delay” deals that profit drug companies while adding billions of dollars annually to consumers’ drug bills. These deals involve paying generic drug competitors to delay release of their cheaper versions of brand-name drugs.

A recent op ed. in The New York Times by physician-writer Dr. Peter Bach revealed that drug prices are skyrocketing because “companies are taking advantage of a mix of laws that force insurers to include essentially all expensive drugs in their policies. Examples of companies exploiting fault lines abound,” Bach says, pointing out that companies “buy up the rights to old inexpensive generic drugs, lock out competitors and raise prices.”