❝ Executives from seven drugmakers laid out their ideas for lowering drug prices to the Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday. One idea was noticeably absent: lowering drug prices.
❝ The companies — AbbVie, AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Pfizer and Sanofi — threw their support behind a number of Trump administration proposals and pitched some of their own ideas in written testimony submitted ahead of the hearing. Executives championed the investments their companies make and the lives they save, while acknowledging patients cannot benefit if they can’t afford medication…
❝ But none of the seven drugmakers committed to, or even suggested, lowering the price of their drugs…
RTFA if you feel the need to read the sort of specious rationales you would expect from corporate royalty. You might wish to send a message to your Congress-critter to take the side of working families, ordinary Americans, instead of these high-priced pimps.
New drug-pricing data shows stunning hikes—one whopping 667% increase : One listed reason for raising prices was “market conditions.” https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/10/new-drug-pricing-data-shows-stunning-hikes-one-whopping-667-increase/ Between 2017 and the first quarter of 2019, drug makers reported hundreds of price hikes. …The report focuses on trends for a little over a thousand drugs. The median price increase overall was 25.8%. Generic drugs, specifically, had higher increases, with a median rise of 37.6%.
But some drugs stood out for having exorbitant hikes, as Kaiser Health News pointed out. A liquid version of generic Prozac (fluoxetine) went from $9 to $69 just in the first quarter of 2019—a 667% increase. The reason given was new production costs. (see https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2019-10-11/californias-new-transparency-law-shows-staggering-rise-in-wholesale-drug-prices )
Likewise, a generic medication for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) called guanfacine, went from about $29 to $87 in the first quarter of 2019, a more than 200% increase.
Guanfacine’s maker, Amneal Pharmaceuticals, also listed production costs as a reason for the hike, as well as “market conditions.”