Posted by Michael Wonder on 18 Jan 2019
Canada’s drug pricing regulator brings rare allegation of excessive pricing against Horizon Pharma
17 January 2019 - Canada’s drug-pricing regulator is accusing an Irish pharmaceutical company of charging an excessive price for a rare-disease drug that sells for nearly $325,000 a year – about 65 times more than an older pill that contains the same medicinal ingredient and treats the same disease.
Staff at the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board say that Horizon Pharma should dramatically slash the price of Procysbi and pay Ottawa as much as $3.15-million to account for the “excess” revenue the company has collected since it began selling the drug in Canada in September, 2017.
“There is no reason why two products which contain the same medicinal ingredient and are indicated for the same condition in the same population should be priced differently,” the board’s staff wrote in a statement of allegations against Horizon released this week.
