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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?
(Score: 3, Informative) by aclarke on Friday December 09 2016, @08:20PM
The quote is actually "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 behaviour." Source: the rest of the internet.
Let's not misspell words in direct quotes please. It's a British story, with British spelling.
Thanks,
- The rest of the non-American English-speaking world.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday December 10 2016, @03:43AM
While I have nothing against British spelling (and I completely understand the annoyance at American spelling taking over more and more news sources), the quote is pasted directly from Reuters, though I know Reuters sometimes publishes separate US and UK versions of its stories... So perhaps this is just a variant.
Regardless, it's implied the quote was spoken, in which case style guides would prescribe that one follow the spelling/formatting of the article overall, rather than shifting spelling to try to approximate whatever style guide the speaker might follow. If I were reporting a spoken quotation from a French person, I wouldn't eschew quotation marks in favor of guillemets, for example. Nor would I go down the rabbit hole of trying to figure out which spelling to use if interviewing a German who speaks English with a British accent. You just use the overall style of your writing.
By the way, it's clear that an American style guide is used for this Reuters link, since the quotations you mention place the punctuation inside...