Welcome to the Week in Review.
1. Panel Discussion On Bipartisan Push For Competition
- Senators Peter Welch and Amy Klobuchar were joined by patient advocates and health care experts for a panel discussion on Big Pharma’s use of patent thickets to extend market exclusivity and the new bipartisan legislation introduced by the Senators to make it easier for generic and biosimilar drugs to enter the market, increasing competition and lowering prescription drug prices. Jacqueline Garibay, a Patients For Affordable Drugs (P4AD) advocate and college student who lives with ankylosing spondylitis (AS), shared how drug makers used anti-competitive tactics to keep biologic drugs, like Enbrel and Humira, priced out of reach. “By using abusive tactics to prevent market competition for life-saving drugs, big drug companies are forcing people like me to pay astronomical prices that we can’t afford. P4AD’s Merith Basey explained to the panel how Big Pharma takes advantage of loopholes in our patent system and “artificially prolong their monopoly periods to keep prices high at the expense of patients.” Bipartisan legislation led by Senators Welch, Klobuchar, and Braun, as well as bipartisan legislation in the House, would tackle the systemic burden of patent thickets head on. Passage of these bills would be a step closer to restoring fairness to the U.S. patent system and pave a pathway for increased competition to deliver long-sought relief to patients. — (YouTube, Welch, Congress.gov)
2. Senate HELP Committee Examines High Drug Prices
- At a hearing this week, the Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions (HELP) Committee asked the CEO’s from Merck, Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS), and Johnson & Johnson (J&J) to justify the higher drug prices they charge in the U.S. compared to other peer countries. A report released by the Senate HELP Committee prior to the hearing outlined the drug companies’ inflated U.S. prices, their spending on lobbying, and efforts to delay competition. One of the drugs under review by the committee was Stelara, an expensive biologic drug manufactured by J&J. P4AD patient advocate Jacquie Persson, who is 35 and living with Crohn’s disease, knows the impact of the high price tag of Stelara all too well. Stelara, which costs $25,000 per month, has tripled in price since market entry. If Jacquie had to access Stelara without insurance coverage, she would be forced to forgo the medication because of its cost and suffer painful flare-ups. Merck’s CEO, Robert Davis, had to answer questions about the company’s patent abuses that drive up prices for people like Steven Hadfield, a 71-year-old patient advocate who takes Merck’s expensive biologic Januvia to manage his type 2 diabetes. These are just two of countless stories of patients on these drugs who face financial hardship and medical uncertainty due to the exorbitant costs driven by pharmaceutical companies’ unfair pricing strategies and patent practices. The second panel featured Tahir Ahmin, Director of the Initiative For Medicines, Access, & Knowledge (I-MAK), Peter Maybarduk, Director of Public Citizen, and Dr. Darius Lakdawalla, Director of Research at the University of Southern California. Peter kicked off the panel by sharing a story from Lois, a Texas patient who critically needs diabetes drug Januvia to control their blood sugar, but is forced to go without because of its price. Lois’s story is one of over 34,000 stories that have been shared with P4AD from patients who have struggled to afford their essential medicines. — (New York Times, Commonwealth Fund, Senate HELP Committee, P4AD, P4AD)
BONUS: This past Sunday’s New York Times featured a story from Mark Miller about the profound impact of the Inflation Reduction Act on prescription drug costs for millions of seniors. The piece focused on P4AD founder and cancer patient, David Mitchell, whose story illustrates how individuals like him are for the first time paying less out-of-pocket as a result of the new drug price law.