On May 16th, Bill Cassidy — Chairman of the Senate Health Committee and the top Republican recipient of pharmaceutical money in the 2024 cycle — came in third in his own Republican primary. A senator who took over $1 million from Big Pharma, blocked a fast-track MFN vote, and killed his own codification bill before it ever got a hearing was sent home by the voters of Louisiana.

In Episode 10, Rob Burgess uses that result as the opening argument — and then spends the rest of the episode dismantling every major industry argument standing between American patients and drug pricing reform.

The innovation argument. The China argument. The supply chain argument. The price controls argument. One by one, on the merits, with the data. And then: what TrumpRx actually is, what it isn't, why the industry cooperates with it, and why MFN codification is the bill they're spending $450 million a year to prevent from ever coming due.

In this episode:

• Bill Cassidy: $1 million from Big Pharma, blocked MFN, killed his own bill — then lost his primary
• 89% of Republican voters support MFN codification. $600 billion in projected patient savings. Why it still hasn't passed.
• The innovation argument, run through 2025 financial data: $5.9 billion cut from research, $97 billion returned to shareholders, $9 billion on advertising
• The China argument exposed: the same industry warning Congress about Chinese competition spent $137 billion funding pharmaceutical development inside China
• The supply chain argument: the industry that offshored API manufacturing for 40 years to maximize margins is now lecturing Congress about supply chain security
• The price controls argument: why MFN pricing is not socialism, it's the deal every other developed nation already has
• TrumpRx: what it is, who it helps, why the industry cooperates with it, and why it doesn't threaten the pricing architecture that matters
• The empty chair: why the next Senate Health Committee chairman determines whether MFN becomes permanent law or stays a voluntary program pharma can ignore
• The conservative case for drug pricing accountability — markets, America First, and cronyism vs. capitalism

The bottom line: The industry's math has always been about money. The reform movement's math is about votes. The votes won — in Louisiana, on a Saturday night. Every member of Congress sitting on pharmaceutical contributions should be doing the same math right now.

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#DrugPricing #HealthcareReform #BigPharmaExposed #PharmaGreed #CorruptionWatch

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.

This week's episode is a replay of a previous episode where Rob Burgess sat 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, because in May of 2026, this conversation matters more than ever before.

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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.

🔔 New episodes every week — subscribe so you don't miss one. 🌐 Get involved at BustBigPharma.com

#DrugPricing #HealthcareReform #BigPharmaExposed #PharmaGreed #CorruptionWatch