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posted by Fnord666 on Friday December 09 2016, @04:01PM   Printer-friendly
from the that's-another-fine-mess-you've-gotten-into dept.

Reuters reports on a record 84 million pound fine (about $107 million) for its role in raising the cost of a generic epilepsy drug by up to 2600%:

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) also fined Flynn Pharma 5.2 million pounds for overcharging for phenytoin sodium capsules, following a dramatic price hike in 2012. The CMA's ruling comes amid a growing debate on both sides of the Atlantic about the ethics of price hikes for old off-patent medicines that are only made by a few firms and where there is little competition. U.S. drugmaker Turing Pharmaceuticals, led at the time by hedge fund manager Martin Shkreli, caused outrage last year by raising the U.S. price of Daraprim, an old anti-infective drug, by more than 5,000 percent to $750 a pill.

[...] Pfizer used to market the medicine under the brand name Epanutin but sold the rights to Flynn, a privately owned British company, in September 2012. It was then debranded, meaning that it was no longer subject to price regulation, and the price soared. "The companies deliberately exploited the opportunity offered by debranding to hike up the price for a drug which is relied upon by many thousands of patients," Philip Marsden, chairman of the CMA's case decision group, said on Wednesday. "This is the highest fine the CMA has imposed and it sends out a clear message to the sector that we are determined to crack down on such behavior."

So, ironically, by turning the drug into a "generic" under UK regulations, they were able to jack the price up to extreme levels. Pfizer plans to appeal the ruling. The Guardian has further details:

Pfizer defended its actions, saying the drugs were loss-making before they were debranded and distributed through Flynn Pharma. It also argued that the price was less than that of the equivalent medicine from another supplier to the NHS.

A spokesman for the CMA said Pfizer recouped its losses on the medication within two months, adding that the price of other drugs did not permit the companies fined to charge "excessive and unfair prices".

One thing I wonder about such fines is whether they can possibly be effective. Even if they manage to hurt a pharmaceutical company's bottom line in the UK a bit, without some sort of international standard regulation of drug pricing, won't they just pass any costs of litigation onto consumers in the U.S. or somewhere else by hiking the price on this or other drugs even more?


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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 09 2016, @05:59PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 09 2016, @05:59PM (#439273)

    >... why can't the consumers do the same ?

    How is this different from USA residents buying drugs from Canada or Mexico? Of course our own FDA frowns on this and claims that it's illegal because drugs for sale in the USA have to pass their safety testing. Personally, I have the feeling that the FDA has been lobbied by big pharma to help keep the drug companies in a monopoly position.

    Note, this only applies for drugs you buy yourself. If you are in the hospital, you are not in a position to do any price shopping, you get what the dispensary has and you pay the price (with any luck, your insurance beats the price down somewhat after the fact). Hard to imagine anything further from "free markets".

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