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More Drugmakers Hike U.S. Prices as New Year Begins

posted by martyb on Thursday January 02 2020, @11:43AM   Printer-friendly
from the prepare-for-sharply-worded-letters dept.

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Cascade:

More drugmakers hike U.S. prices as new year begins:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Drugmakers including Bristol-Myers Squibb Co (BMY.N), Gilead Sciences Inc (GILD.O), and Biogen Inc (BIIB.O) hiked U.S. list prices on more than 50 drugs on Wednesday, bringing total New Year’s Day drug price increases to more than 250, according to data analyzed by healthcare research firm 3 Axis Advisors.

Reuters reported on Tuesday that drugmakers including Pfizer Inc (PFE.N), GlaxoSmithKline PLC (GSK.L) and Sanofi SA (SASY.PA) were planning to increase prices on more than 200 drugs in the United States on Jan. 1.

Nearly all of the price increases are below 10% and the median price increase is around 5%, according to 3 Axis.

More early year price increases could still be announced.

Soaring U.S. prescription drug prices are expected to again be a central issue in the presidential election. President Donald Trump, who made bringing them down a core pledge of his 2016 campaign, is running for re-election in 2020.

[...] The United States, which leaves drug pricing to market competition, has higher prices than in other countries where governments directly or indirectly control the costs, making it the world’s most lucrative market for manufacturers.

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday January 03 2020, @04:38AM (1 child)

    by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Friday January 03 2020, @04:38AM (#938966) Journal
    Sounds about right.
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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 08 2020, @03:08PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday January 08 2020, @03:08PM (#941055) Journal
    Do we need another Darth Strawman here? Perhaps you should apprentice to someone else? Azuma is neglecting to mention that I have corrected her continued mistaken impressions numerous times.

    Here, the pharmaceutical market has been turned into a wasteland by US regulation. If you want to introduce a generic competitor to a drug that's already there and proven to be safe enough, it's tens of millions of dollars just to continue to show it's safe enough. On the other extreme, if you have something new and radical with many misses as you attempt to fine tune how the drug works? It can go over a billion dollars [nature.com]. That enormous barrier to entry explains on its own why so many drugs are so expensive even when patents run out.

    Moving on, the usual ways around such things, say like importing drugs from places where they are vastly cheaper is also illegal.

    Azuma can derp on about my obsession with bad regulations, but well, it's not that hard to find them and they go away so slowly.