Posted by Michael Wonder on 21 Nov 2018
A drug maker boosted the price of its opioid overdose antidote by 600 percent, and taxpayers suffered
19 November 2018 - In order to capitalise on the opioid crisis, a small company that sells a version of naloxone, a decades-old drug that is widely used to reverse the effect of opioid and heroin overdoses, raised the price of its product by more than 600% between 2014 and 2017, which cost the federal government more than $142 million, according to a lengthy report from a Senate subcommittee.
Central to its strategy, Kaleo circumvented the traditional pharmaceutical market by subsidizing patients who were given its Evzio opioid antidote device, instead of contracting with pharmacy benefit managers and insurers.
In doing so, the company used a controversial scheme to provide Evzio at no cost to patients, but counted on private and public insurers to pay an ever-rising wholesale, or list, price.
