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In what has become an annual, unhealthy ritual, major pharmaceutical companies kicked off the New Year by significantly raising the prices of numerous widely used prescription medications. This most recent wave of price gouging came one year after then-President-elect Donald Trump correctly stated the obvious: The pharmaceutical industry “was getting away with murder” when it came to its pricing practices.[1]
Drugmaker Pfizer led the pack by hiking the prices on 116 drugs anywhere...
In what has become an annual, unhealthy ritual, major pharmaceutical companies kicked off the New Year by significantly raising the prices of numerous widely used prescription medications. This most recent wave of price gouging came one year after then-President-elect Donald Trump correctly stated the obvious: The pharmaceutical industry “was getting away with murder” when it came to its pricing practices.[1]
Drugmaker Pfizer led the pack by hiking the prices on 116 drugs anywhere from 3 percent to more than 9 percent.[2] At the high end of this range, the company increased the prices of 20 drugs — including its erectile dysfunction drug sildenafil (VIAGRA), cholesterol-lowering drug atorvastatin (LIPITOR), psychiatric drug sertraline (ZOLOFT) and smoking-cessation drug varenicline (CHANTIX) — by more than 9 percent. Fortunately, the first three of these drugs are available in generic versions, so patients have cheaper alternatives.
AbbVie appears to have made the single most expensive price hike by raising the price of the blockbuster drug adalimumab (HUMIRA) — which is approved by the Food and Drug Administration for treatment of numerous inflammatory diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis[3] — by nearly 10 percent.[4] This price increase is likely the most costly for the U.S. health care system, with analysts projecting that the company may rake in an additional $1.2 billion in 2018.
Not to be outdone, AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis and Sano increased prices on 126 medications by between 1.5 and 9.9 percent.
Commenting on the pricing practices of drug companies, Peter Maybarduk, director of Public Citizen’s Access to Medicines Program, recently noted that, “This at a time when treatment rationing is on the rise, [prescription drugs] are a leading driver of increases in American health care costs, families are going bankrupt from prescription bills and Americans across party lines rank reducing prescription prices as one of their top priorities for Congress.”[5]
Maybarduk further explained that “the pharmaceutical sector continues to flout market economics by increasing its prices on old products year-by-year. This is because our government gives these corporations monopolies, limits the public’s ability to negotiate with monopolists and does nothing to impose fiscal disciplines on price.”
Fortunately, there are commonsense solutions to the relentless price gouging by the pharmaceutical industry. For example, the “Stop Price Gouging Act,” introduced by U.S. Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and U.S. Reps. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) and Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), could stop the unaffordable price hikes imposed by drug companies on their essential prescription drug products.
Call your members of Congress and urge them to support this consumer-friendly legislation.
References
[1] Johnson CY. Trump on drug prices: Pharma companies are ‘getting away with murder’. The Washington Post. January 11, 2017. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/01/11/trump-on-drug-prices-pharma-companies-are-getting-away-with-murder. Accessed January 16, 2018.
[2] Sagonowsky E. Pfizer, Novartis and more post price hikes on dozens of drugs, but AbbVie’s is worth the most. FiercePharma. January 4, 2018. https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/drug-price-hikes-a-few-bad-actors-or-widespread-pharma. Accessed January 16, 2018.
[3] AbbVie. Drug label: adalimumab injection (HUMIRA). December 2017. https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/label/2017/125057s403lbl.pdf. Accessed January 16, 2018.
[4] Sagonowsky E. Pfizer, Novartis and more post price hikes on dozens of drugs, but AbbVie’s is worth the most. FiercePharma. January 4, 2018. https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/drug-price-hikes-a-few-bad-actors-or-widespread-pharma. Accessed January 16, 2018.
[5] Public Citizen. Pharma corporations heard Americans’ cries, then vow to raise prices again. January 4, 2018. https://www.citizen.org/media/press-releases/pharma-corporations-heard-americans%E2%80%99-cries-then-vow-raise-prices-again. Accessed January 16, 2018.
