Welcome to the Week in Review.
Drugmaker’s Mid-Year Money Grab
Between June 30th and July 5th, drug companies hiked the prices of 195 prescription drugs, with 50 percent of those increases exceeding the rate of inflation. According to our own analysis, prices raised on cancer drugs outpaced increases across other classes of medications, accounting for 22 percent of all increases. Examples of other price hikes include:Revlimid, a drug that treats multiple myeloma, had a price increase of $5,832, being hiked from $83,322 to $89,155 for a supply of 100 pills. MACI, a cell therapy that treats knee pain, saw an increase of $4,494 per treatment.“Pharma corporations have been getting away with these price hikes for the last two decades, so they’re continuing what they’ve always done: To try to maximize the price the public will pay,” P4AD’s Merith Basey told MM+M. Historically, drug companies hiked prices on essential medicines with impunity, forcing patients to pay three to eight times what other countries pay for the same brand-name drugs. The Inflation Reduction Act now offers some protections from Big Pharma price gouging for patients on Medicare as the law requires drug companies to pay rebates if they raise prices higher than the rate of inflation, potentially saving patients up to thousands of dollars per medication. Additionally, the Congressional Budget Office projects the provision will reduce the federal deficit by $63.2 billion over 10 years (2022-2031). We will continue to share our analysis of July price hikes and trends in the coming weeks. Watch this space for updates. — (MM+M, Inside Health Policy, The Hill, Commonwealth Fund, KFF)
Debunking Pharma’s Dual Narrative
On a quarterly earnings call this week, a Johnson & Johnson (J&J) executive shared that the final price offers received for J&J’s drugs being negotiated under the new Medicare negotiation program — Xarelto, Stelara, and Imbruvica — wouldn’t hurt the company’s sales projections through 2030. Novartis CEO Vas Narasimhan echoed a similar message to investors yesterday, sharing that a lower negotiated price for its heart failure drug, Entresto, “might be manageable” for the company. In February, AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot described the ongoing negotiation process as “relatively encouraging” and in April, Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS) CEO Chris Boerner stated that the company can “more than compensate” for the impact of the Inflation Reduction Act. Meanwhile, all the aforementioned companies are suing to block implementation of the Medicare negotiation program. Over the last week, J&J, BMS, and AstraZeneca, all filed opening briefs with the U.S. Court of Appeals, challenging the rejections of their cases to stop the program. While these drugmakers continue to wield their massive financial resources to undermine the program in the courts , propagating fear about its supposed harm on innovation, industry executives are simultaneously assuring investors that lower negotiated prices will have minimal impact on their bottom line. — (Endpoints, Fierce Pharma, Endpoints, BioPharma Dive, Bloomberg Law, Fightpharma.org)
In Case You Missed It
Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are intensifying their investigations into the predatory practices of the drug industry and pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs). On Tuesday, Senate aides met with Novo Nordisk executives to discuss the company’s discontinuation of one of their long-acting insulin products, Levemir. Last year, Novo Nordisk announced price reductions on some of its older insulins, but before the price cuts were even able to take effect, the company announced it would be withdrawing Levemir from the market by the end of 2024. This decision sparked outrage among patients who depend on this widely-used, essential medicine and are now forced to find costly alternatives for their treatment. Next Tuesday, July 23rd, executives from three large PBMs — CVS Caremark, Express Scripts, and OptumRx — will testify before the House Oversight Committee at a hearing titled “The Role of Pharmacy Benefit Managers in Prescription Drug Markets Part III: Transparency and Accountability.”