Constituents Hold Lawmakers’ Feet To The Fire Over Promises On Lowering Drug Prices

Stat: Despite Their Pledges, Democrats Haven’t Yet Lowered Drug Prices. Here’s How They’re Explaining Themselves
Democrats, [Rep. Chris Pappas (D-N.H.)] included, ran on the issue of lowering the cost of prescription drugs, and have little to show for it. The House has only passed piecemeal drug pricing reforms and House Democrats have publicly feuded over how to approach larger, systemic issues, like how the government can best negotiate over the price of drugs. And that is nothing to say of the Republican-controlled Senate, which has yet to take up any of the House’s drug pricing bills. (Florko, 8/19)

Stat: A Drug Maker Revamped An Old Treatment — And Hiked The Price By 1,300%
The Trump administration may brag that drug makers are dialing back price hikes, but a company that makes an essential mineral used by hospitals for feeding patients intravenously recently raised its price by a whopping 1,300%. Last month, American Regent began selling a product called Selenious Acid Injection, which is used for total parenteral nutrition, a way to provide nutrients to patients who cannot eat food. Selenious Acid is an updated version of an older product called Selenium which, along with numerous other decades-old medicines, had never actually been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. (Silverman, 8/20)

Bloomberg: When A $2.1 Million Drug Could Cure Your Child’s Fatal Disease
Gene therapy is bringing out the best in America’s health-care system—and its worst. Zolgensma, the first systemic gene therapy of its kind that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved, appears to cure in one shot a rare muscle-destroying disease that can be a death sentence for infants and toddlers. (The kids still carry the gene mutation; they just don’t exhibit the eventually fatal symptoms.) It’s also the world’s most expensive medication. Novartis AG set the price at $2.1 million after the FDA approval came down on May 24, and some families have been left scrambling for ways to get the drug in its first several months on the market. (Koons and Cotez, 8/20)

CT News Junkie: Blumenthal: ‘New Civil Rights Movement’ Needed To Combat High Drug Prices
Several Connecticut organizations joined the national “People Over Pharma Profits” movement on Tuesday, adding state voices to the campaign to reduce prescription drug costs for consumers. At an event organized by the Connecticut Citizen Action Group and hosted by the Wheeler Family Health & Wellness Center, lawmakers and activists pledged to take lobbying efforts and legislative reform through the November 2020 election. “We need to create a political movement, a new civil rights movement for health,” Blumenthal said. “Pharmaceutical drugs are not a luxury. They’re not a convenience.” (Beals, 8/21)

Reuters: Who Is Next In Big Pharma's Merger Spree?
Consolidation in the U.S. healthcare industry, which has already witnessed a string of multi-billion dollar deals, is expected to remain a major theme for the rest of 2019. Bristol-Myers Squibb's $74 billion acquisition of Celgene set the M&A ball rolling in January, and was followed by AbbVie Inc's $63 billion bid for troubled smaller rival Allergan Plc. (8/19)

Stat: ‘Maisie’a Army’: How A Grassroots Group Is Mobilizing To Help Toddlers Access A Lifesaving Drug
When the family of 20-month-old Maisie Green heard late last month that their insurance company in Grand Junction, Colo., had agreed to cover a new gene therapy for her spinal muscular atrophy, they were elated. They also knew it was no accident. For two months, the family and a group of more than 700 volunteers, calling themselves “Maisie’s Army,” ran a social media campaign to convince the Greens’ insurer to overturn its decision to deny Maisie access to Zolgensma — the world’s most expensive drug at $2.1 million. (Chakradhar, 8/20)

The Associated Press: Brand-Name Drug Prices Rising At Slower Pace, Lower Amounts
Drug companies are still raising prices for brand-name prescription medicines, just not as often or by as much as they used to, according to an Associated Press analysis. After years of frequent list price hikes, many drugmakers are showing some restraint, according to the analysis of drug prices provided by health information firm Elsevier. (Johnson and Forster, 8/19)

Stat: Medicare Could Have Saved Billions If Older Generics Were Prescribed, Study Finds
Medicare and its beneficiaries could have saved an estimated $17.7 billion earlier this decade on generic versions of older medicines instead of paying for newer, chemically similar but more expensive brand-name drugs that companies launched to replace those older pills, according to a new analysis in the Annals of Internal Medicine. For example, Medicare spent $13.4 billion on the Nexium acid reflux pill between 2011 and 2017, but could have saved $12.7 billion if, instead, prescriptions were written for generic copies of the older version of the drug called Prilosec. Similarly, Medicare beneficiaries spent more than $832 million on Nexium between 2011 and 2015, but could have $690 million if prescribed a generic version of Prilosec. (Silverman, 8/16)

Stat: Drug Maker Pays $200,000 To Settle Charges Of Unfairly Disclosing Material Info To Analysts
A small drug company called TherapeuticsMD (TXMD) agreed to pay $200,000 to settle charges of illegally sharing material, non-public information with analysts after holding discussions with the Food and Drug Administration about a key medicine being developed. In a cease-and-desist order disclosing the settlement, the Securities and Exchange Commission described how company executives twice fed so-called Wall Street sell-side analysts, who follow stocks and report on their prospects, information about an estrogen therapy for postmenopausal women. (Silverman, 8/20)