A week of high drama. Pharma CEOs v. Congress. Jordyn v. Kardashians. Green Book v. Everyone.
Welcome to the week in review in prescription drug pricing!
1. How Pharma lost its edge in Washington
David Mitchell talks to Bloomberg to discuss the sea change in Washington. — (Bloomberg Businessweek)
2. Big Pharma hurts one in four Americans
One in four Americans can’t afford their prescription drugs. Just about everyone says that’s unreasonable and that Congress needs to act now. — (Kaiser Family Foundation)
3. Firdapse Flops
Catalyst Pharmaceuticals priced an old drug for Lambert-Eaton Myasthenic Syndrome at $375,000 a year. Now the FDA is under pressure to make old versions of the drug available for patients. — (STAT)
4. Everybody’s wrong but me
Tuesday’s Senate Finance Committee hearing centered around the complexity of drug pricing. Pharma executives cited everyone from pharmacy benefit managers to the federal government as the cause of high prices. — (The New York Times)
5. Part B fix picking up steam?
Big Pharma and its allies are ramping up a campaign to defeat reforms to Medicare Part B. But the Trump administration proposal is gaining allies on Capitol Hill— (The Washington Post)
The Miracle on Ice turned 39. Patients For Affordable Drugs turned 2. Can we orchestrate the upset of this century?
Welcome to the week in review in prescription drug pricing!
Crohn’s Patient Claps Back
A Crohn’s patient who takes Humira, the world’s best-selling drug from one of the world’s most corrupt pharmaceutical corporations, tells it like it is on NBC Nightly News. — (NBC Nightly News)
Pharma CEOs in the Hot Seat
On Tuesday, seven pharmaceutical company executives will testify before the Senate on rising prescription drug prices. Get to know the price-hiking characters who will make up the Senate Finance Committee panel. — (STAT)
Utah Gets Salty with Big Pharma
Utahns are fed up with federal inaction on drug prices, so lawmakers in Salt Lake City are weighing a bill to import drugs from Canada. — (Deseret News)
Is Pharma planning the next Fyre Fest?
Big Pharma is linking up with prominent Instagram influencers to target millennial likes and their dollars. — (Vox)
Be Wary of the Expert
The drug industry and its hired gun “experts” are targeting and twisting the narrative on drug importation from Canada. — (Tarbell)
Welcome to the week in review in prescription drug pricing.
1. Pharma’s GOP force field dissolving
Republicans are eyeing patent reform to lower drug prices. — (Axios)
2. Coast to coast
In California, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom wants to leverage California’s buying power to negotiate drug prices in the state’s massive Medicaid program. Massachusetts Republican governor Charlie Baker wants drug corporations to come to the bargaining table, too. — (KHN & The Boston Globe )
3. Too Much Is Never Enough
Vertex and England have been locked in a battle for three years over the price of the company’s charity-funded cystic fibrosis medicines. As patients suffer, Vertex says it just can’t offer a deal — even after reporting that Q4 profit doubled. — (The Guardian)
4. Our heroes
P4AD named two more drug pricing heroes this week — read more about Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Ohio resident and cancer patient Bob Fowler — (P4AD)
5. Required reading
Settle in over the weekend for a deep dive into why drugs are so expensive. — (NY Review of Books)
Two important people wrote Medium posts this week. You maybe missed this one.
Welcome to the Week in Review in Prescription Drug Pricing.
1. News from our founder
Patients For Affordable Drugs Founder David Mitchell shared tough news this week — his cancer has relapsed. Even on his worst days, he is buoyed by the bravery of our community of patients. — (Medium)
2. Exploitation over Innovation
A young man relying on a drug to walk saw his costs rise from $0 to $375k — and all a drug corporation did was grab the patent, add a preservative, and give the product a new name. — (NBC Nightly News)
3. J&J caves to transparency pressure
Johnson & Johnson will begin to advertise on television the cost of one of its medications, giving in to pressure from the Trump administration to list drug prices in TV ads. We maintain advertising tax credits should be abolished, or the ads should end all together. — (AP)
4. CREATES is BACK
Congress needs to pass the bipartisan bill that would increase drug competition and save taxpayers more than $3 billion — (Center for Biosimilars)
5. CEOs to testify
After a dressing down by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), five Big Pharma CEOs agree to testify at the committee’s drug pricing hearings later this month. — (STAT)
Ready your chicken wings, chili bowls, and Tony Romo prediction bets.
But first, it’s the week in review in prescription drug pricing!
1. Storms are a-brewing
What’s colder? This wind chill or Pharma’s ice-cold refusal to testify before the Senate Finance Committee? — (The Hill)
2. Middlemen called out
The Trump administration took a step in the right direction by increasing transparency and ending rebates to drug middlemen in government programs. The hope is savings would reach patients instead. — (The Washington Post)
3. Touchdown!!! ??
The Super Bowl may be the most-watched event this week, but we’re also excited about a Congressional kickoff — a probe into insulin costs — (FiercePharma)
4. Strong armed no more?
There’s been a surprise twist in a three-year drug pricing standoff between the UK and Vertex — the maker of groundbreaking-but-pricey cystic fibrosis therapies. A British politician is pushing parliament to issue a license that would allow a generic drug maker to make copies of a Vertex medicine. — (STAT)
5. California Love
The governor of the country’s most populous state signed an executive order directing the state’s massive Medicaid program to negotiate prescription drug prices for 13 million recipients. — (Reuters)
It’s drug pricing palooza!
Welcome to the week in review in prescription drug pricing.
1. LOL Pfizer
Pfizer spun its January price hikes as impacting an itsy bitsy portion of its drugs. Too bad the 41 drugs it hiked represent half the pharma giant’s revenue. — (Axios)
The Republican-controlled Senate and Democratic-controlled House are kicking off 2019 by lighting up out-of-control drug pricing with Senate Finance and House Oversight committee hearings Tuesday.— (The Hill)
4. It’s a thing. A 2020 thing. Potential presidential candidates are staking claims in the drug pricing debate. Smart move,
since 80 percent of the public wants our elected leaders to lower drug prices. — (KHN)
5. Highly Illogical
The drug lobby’s arguments against holding down prices in Medicare Part B just don’t add up. — (STAT)
Welcome to the Week in Review in Prescription Drug Pricing!
1. Laboratories for lower drug prices
States aren’t waiting around for the federal government to act on drug prices. Maryland wants a board to hold Big Pharma accountable. — (The Baltimore Sun)
2. Close the Big Pharma Tax Loophole
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) introduced legislation to prohibit pharmaceutical corporations from claiming tax deductions for direct-to-consumer advertising expenses. Big Pharma spent $6 billion on direct-to-consumer ads in 2016 alone. — (STAT News)
3. Azar on the move
HHS chief Alex Azar is on the move on Capitol Hill, stumping for lower drug prices, especially in Medicare Part B. — (The Washington Post)
4. Pfizer Pflops
Pfizer hiked the prices on 41 prescription drugs this week, in blatant disregard for the financial health and wellbeing of all Americans. It’s not OK. — (P4AD)
5. ✈️✈️✈️
Are the executives at Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and Novartis doing a lot of “innovating” on their private airplanes? — (Twitter)
WASHINGTON D.C. — Patients For Affordable Drugs Now launched a nearly $1 million campaign in support of the Department of Health and Human Services’ proposal to lower drug prices in Medicare Part B. Under the proposal, Medicare would pay only 26 percent more than other wealthy countries for drugs administered by physicians or in hospital settings — that’s compared to the 80 percent more it pays today. But Big Pharma is attacking the proposal because the changes could actually rein in outrageous drug prices. Patients For Affordable Drugs Now’s campaign will include digital advertisements, patient fly-ins, polling, and videos featuring patients who stand to access more affordable drugs under the proposal.
“American patients pay far more than people in other countries for prescription drugs, and it’s just plain wrong,” said David Mitchell, a cancer patient and the founder of Patients For Affordable Drugs Now. “Out-of-control drug prices force hard working Americans to choose between groceries and their medications. HHS has a promising plan to use an International Pricing Index to bring U.S. drug prices more in line with drug prices in other wealthy countries. We’re standing up in support of this change because America’s prescription drug pricing system is broken, and patients need change now.”
The nationwide ads on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Google will urge Americans to contact their senators and representatives in support of the HHS Part B demonstration (examples below).
According to a recent poll, voters support the HHS proposal to lower drug prices by a 71-point margin (80 percent support vs. 9 percent oppose). Majorities from both parties agree that Democrats and Republicans in Congress should support the proposal.
Importantly, Americans find Big Pharma’s claim that the proposed reforms would hinder patient access to be wrong. Eight in 10 voters believe the proposal will result in better careor have no impact on the care they receive. That’s bolstered by the fact that nine out of 10 big pharmaceutical companies actually spend more on advertising and marketing than on research and development, according to the Washington Post. There is no evidence the proposed Part B changes would impact patient access to drugs unless drug corporations withhold drugs from patients.
Patients For Affordable Drugs Now recently released a petition signed by more than 1,500 patient advocates urging the administration to move forward with the proposal to lower drug prices in Medicare Part B. The letter was accompanied by a video featuring Ruth Rinehart, a patient with primary immune deficiency from Florida, and Mike Gaffney, a resident of Washington State who lives with a rare form of multiple myeloma called POEMS syndrome. In the video, the patients speak directly about what the Part B changes would mean for them.
