Investors With Ties To Religious Groups Jump Into Fray On High Drug Prices
News outlets report on stories related to pharmaceutical drug pricing.
The Wall Street Journal:
Faith-Based Investor Group Calls For Drugmakers To Be Transparent On Pricing
A group of 300 institutional investors, including many with ties to religious organizations, is waging a new campaign to press drugmakers to justify their price increases. The investors, members of the New York-based Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, are asking 17 drug companies—including Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer Inc. and Merck & Co.—to be more transparent about when and why they raise prices. (Loftus, 10/24)
Stat:
Interfaith Investor Coalition Pushes Shareholder Resolutions On Drug Prices
In the latest bid to put a lid on rising drug costs, a coalition of 300 institutional investors has filed shareholder resolutions with 11 big US drug makers to explain and justify all price increases and the risks these may pose to stockholders. At the same time, the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility also wrote six large European companies to schedule talks about transparency around their pricing. The resolutions ask the companies to issue reports by November that list the rates of price increases for all of their top-selling brand-name medicines between 2010 and 2016, along with the rationale and criteria used to raise prices. (Silverman, 10/24)
Roll Call:
FDA Approval Changes Could Affect Drug Prices
Upcoming changes to the Food and Drug Administration’s reviews for generic drugs could have an impact on drug prices if they help introduce more competition to the market. In separate public meetings on Thursday and Friday, FDA officials discussed their plans for renewing the programs that charge generic drugmakers a fee to go through the application process. The FDA has been scrutinized for aspects of its generic approval programs that critics contend prevent cheaper generic therapies from coming to market. (Siddons, 10/24)
The Fiscal Times:
Prescription Drug Prices Headed For Double-Digit Increases In 2017
Specialty drugs get a lot of attention when it comes to higher costs, although price increases are occurring across the board. Specialty drug prices are projected to increase 18.7 percent next year (after growing 18.9 percent in 2016). Although they comprise less than 1 percent of prescriptions, specialty drugs account for 35 percent of the prescription drug price trend, according to HR Consultancy Segal. Meanwhile, the overall cost of all drugs prescribed for employees under age 65 is expected to grow 11.6 percent next year, on top of an 11.3 percent hike this year. (Braverman, 10/24)
Stat:
FDA Official Warns Other Drug Makers Not To Copy Sarepta
Any company that plans to mimic the approach taken by Sarepta Therapeutics to win regulatory approval of a drug should think twice. That was the blunt message delivered on Tuesday by a high-ranking US Food and Drug Administration official in the wake of simmering controversy over a recent decision to approve a Sarepta drug for Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a rare and fatal disease. (Silverman, 10/20)
Stat:
Elizabeth Warren Criticizes Feds For A 'Shamefully Weak' Deal With Mylan
For the third time this month, a US senator is harshly criticizing a deal that Mylan Pharmaceuticals reached with the US Department of Justice for shortchanging Medicaid over rebates for its EpiPen device, which sparked national outrage after a series of price hikes. In an Oct. 21 letter, Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) complained to US Attorney General Loretta Lynch that the $465 million settlement “fails to hold Mylan accountable” and is “shockingly soft on this corporate wrongdoer,” because Mylan did not admit any wrongdoing, none of its executives were penalized, and the company can deduct the payment from its corporate taxes. (Silverman, 10/24)
Bloomberg:
Senator Warren Says Mylan Settlement With DOJ ‘Shamefully Weak’
Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren is the latest critic of the $465 million settlement that drugmaker Mylan NV said it reached with the federal government over Medicaid rebates for its EpiPen allergy shot. In a letter Friday to Attorney General Loretta Lynch, the Democratic senator wrote that her staff calculated Mylan underpaid Medicaid rebates by an estimated $530 million -- $65 million more than the settlement -- mostly because Mylan didn’t pay the required inflation rebate. Warren wrote the settlement with the Department of Justice is “shamefully weak” because it lacks criminal penalties or any incentive to “prevent drug companies from engaging in abusive schemes to defraud Medicaid and rip off taxpayers.” (Hopkins, 10/21)
Stat:
Senator Richard Burr, A Pharma Favorite, Gets Help From His Friends
If you leave the American Tobacco Trail and drive east, past Dame’s Almost Famous Chicken & Waffles, Bullock’s Bar-B-Que, and the Truly Blessed Hair Salon, you will eventually come to the world’s largest research park. This 16-square-mile stretch of Piedmont pine forest is home to about 200 companies that develop drugs and devices, run clinical trials, and otherwise push the boundaries of bioscience. GlaxoSmithKline, Merck & Co., and Biogen all have offices here, as do other industry leaders and startups. This is Burr country. (Kaplan, 10/25)
Stat:
EpiPen Prescriptions Continue To Climb, But Market Share Dropped
EpiPen may be a budget buster for some households, but new data indicates prescriptions for the allergy emergency device are outpacing last year’s figures. At the same time, though, more prescriptions were written recently for lower-cost alternatives and, as a result, last month marked the first time in three years that EpiPen’s share of prescriptions for such devices fell. The number of prescriptions written for the auto-injector in August rose 19 percent from the same month a year ago. Overall, the number of prescriptions are up 14 percent through September, compared with the same period in 2015. In fact, there were 40 percent more prescriptions written in the first nine months of this year compared with 2013, even as the price for EpiPen was rising, according to Athenahealth, which provides technology services to physicians. (Silverman, 10/25)
Stat:
Congressman Calls For Probe Into Valeant's Pricing Of Lead Poisoning Drug
The huge increase in the price of a lifesaving lead poisoning treatment has prompted a Michigan lawmaker to call for a congressional investigation into Valeant Pharmaceuticals. Two years ago, the drug maker boosted the list price for Calcium EDTA by roughly 2,700 percent. After Valeant bought the drug in 2013 as part of a deal in which it took over another company, the list price for a package of vials started rising quickly. After being stable at $950, Valeant raised the price several times before closing out 2014 at more than $26,900. (Silverman, 10/21)
The Fiscal Times:
How Big Pharma Lobbyists Keep Medicare Drug Prices High
An analysis jointly published this week by the Center for Responsive Politics and FairWarning, a non-profit news organization, highlights the political clout exerted by the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), a major industry group, and some of the largest U.S. drug companies. Since early 2003, the drug manufacturing industry spent more than $1.9 billion on lobbying members of Congress on Medicare Part D and other issues important to the industry. In just 2015 and the first half of this year, the industry’s lobbying bill was equivalent to spending $468,108 on every member of Congress, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. (Pianin, 10/20)
Chicago Tribune:
Drug Price Control? AbbVie, Takeda, Astellas Vote 'No' With Their Millions
Three of the area's largest pharmaceutical companies are in the thick of an intense California-based battle over rising drug costs, a fight that could spread to Illinois and other states. AbbVie, Takeda and Astellas, along with other major drug companies, have contributed nearly $86 million toward an effort to defeat Proposition 61. That's an Election Day ballot referendum where voters decide yes or no about regulating prices of drugs purchased by some California agencies on behalf of 4.4 million people whose health care is covered by the state. (Reed, 10/21)
The New York Times:
Unicef Cuts Cost Of Vaccine That Protects Against 5 Diseases
The United Nations Children’s Fund has made a deal with six vaccine manufacturers that will cut in half the price of a shot that protects children against five diseases, the fund announced last week. The deal will mean three years’ worth of vaccine at an average price of 84 cents a dose; buyers currently pay about $1.84, according to Unicef. (McNeil, 10/24)
Columbus Dispatch:
Middlemen Drive Up Prescription Drug Prices, Critics Say
The industry created to keep drug prices in check is capitalizing on a lack of government oversight to rake in huge profits — often at the expense of patients, health plans and pharmacies, critics say. Drugmakers such as Mylan have been the target of much consumer wrath after the cost of its EpiPen, used to treat potentially deadly reactions to food allergies and bee stings, rose by more than 500 percent in just a few years. But a lesser-known group of companies called pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs, also play a critical role in driving up drug prices, said former state Rep. Tim Brown, a Bowling Green Republican. And not enough people know about it. (Pyle, 10/23)