When someone complains about the cost of medications, pharmaceutical companies like to cite research and development costs or deflect blame in other ways. According to a federal lawsuit filed last week by 20 states’ attorneys general, higher prices also occur because big pharma plays fast and loose with the rules.
When someone complains about the cost of medications, pharmaceutical companies like to cite research and development costs or deflect blame in other ways. According to a federal lawsuit filed last week by 20 states’ attorneys general, higher prices also occur because big pharma plays fast and loose with the rules.
The antitrust suit alleges six drugmakers, including Mylan, conspired to fix prices and divvy up market share. The suit focuses on two generic drugs — doxycycline hyclate delayed release, which is an antibiotic, and glyburide, a diabetes medication. However, Pennsylvania Attorney General Bruce Beemer, one of those who filed the suit, said investigators continue looking at the drugmakers’ activity with other medications.
The suit alleges price-fixing was orchestrated by the companies’ executives; that coordination of their activities occurred at trade shows and through phone calls, emails and text messages; and that those involved, knowing their actions were wrong, took steps to conceal them. In one case, according to the suit, executives of Mylan and Heritage Pharmaceuticals “agreed to allocate market share and refrain from competing with one another for customers in the market for Doxy DR. The objective was to avoid a price war which would reduce profitability for both companies. Mylan agreed to ‘walk away’ from at least one large national wholesaler and one large pharmacy chain to allow Heritage to obtain the business and increase its market share.”
The impact of such behavior falls squarely on the average consumer, who pays what Beemer called “artificially higher prices” for medications.
Consumers already have protested huge price increases for Mylan’s EpiPen, used to combat allergic reactions, and Turing Pharmaceuticals’ move last year to increase the cost of an anti-parasitic drug to $750 per pill, up from $13.50. The suit against the six drugmakers gives consumers more reason to think they’re being taken advantage of.
If true, claims made in the suit are an additional reason to support legislation that would identify drugs with the biggest price jumps and require manufacturers to explain the increases.
A spoonful of transparency would help the medicine go down.
— Pittsburgh Post-Gazette