Posted by Michael Wonder on 08 Dec 2016
High price tags for new medicines are about to come under renewed pressure
10 December 2016 - The president-elect, formerly pharma industry’s preferred candidate, has promised to bring prices down.
The past year has brought a steady infusion of grim news about the price of drugs. Much outrage has been caused by a price-gouging scheme for an AIDS medicine. Other scandals have included the cost of the allergy medicine EpiPen, the excessive cost of insulin, an expensive cure for Hepatitis C and enormous price increases in the cost of two heart drugs. New data on federal spending on programmes for the poor and the elderly show that last year $9.2bn was spent on a single medicine—Harvoni, which cures Hepatitis C. More such tales can be expected from the ongoing antitrust investigation by the Department of Justice into possible price fixing in generic drugs.
