Posted by Michael Wonder on 28 Jun 2017
FDA commissioner takes on Martin Shkreli-wannabes over huge drug price hikes
28 June 2017 - "We don't play a role in drug pricing, but we do affect drug competition," Dr. Scott Gottlieb says.
The FDA will try to prevent major pharmaceutical companies from playing "regulatory arbitrage" in the generic drug business, the agency's commissioner, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, told CNBC on Wednesday.
"We don't play a role in drug pricing, but we do affect drug competition in terms of getting new drugs on to the market, and create competition to older drugs, particularly with generic drugs," Gottlieb said on "Squawk Box."
When asked directly how the FDA plans to deal with situations like ex-pharma CEO Martin Shkreli's raising of a lifesaving drug by 5,000%, Gottlieb said, "There's a second set of policies ... that I think would prevent the ability of people to come in and pick off low-volume generic drugs, where there might not be a lot of competitors because they're just not used a lot, and raise the price and basically take advantage of regulatory arbitrage, where it might take a year or more to get another generic copy to the market."
