Posted by Michael Wonder on 10 Jan 2019
Minister to ‘talk to Novartis’ after five-fold cancer drug price hike
10 January 2019 - Health minister Bruno Bruins is planning to talk to Swiss pharmaceuticals giant Novartis this week about the five-fold hike in the price of a drug to treat a rare form of cancer.
Bruins told a television talk show on Wednesday evening that the decision to put up the price of a year’s supply to €90,000 is an ‘example of how not to behave’. ‘These are outrageous sums,’ Bruins said. ‘And I am not done with this yet.’
The drug, lutetium-octreotaat, was developed in the mid 1980s by researchers at Rotterdam’s Erasmus Medical Centre but the company which makes it is now owned by Novartis following a string of takeovers.
