Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Drug Executives: Price Hikes A 'Reality' In Competitive Marketplace
Bloomberg: Shkreli Was Right: Everyone's Hiking Drug Prices
After Martin Shkreli raised the price of anti-parasitic drug Daraprim more than 50-fold to $750 a pill last year, he said he wasn’t alone in taking big price hikes. As it turns out, the former drug executive was right. A survey of about 3,000 brand-name prescription drugs found that prices more than doubled for 60 and at least quadrupled for 20 since December 2014. (Langreth and Spalding, 2/1)
NPR: Modest Price Cut Expected For Generic Version Of Cancer Pill Gleevec
Pharmacies across the U.S. will begin receiving shipments of a generic form of the revolutionary cancer pill Gleevec this week after the drug lost its patent protection on Monday. The generic version of drug, known as imatinib, is likely to cost about 30 percent less than brand-name Gleevec, says Kal Sundaram, the CEO of Sun Pharmaceuticals, the Mumbai, India-based company that will make the first generic. (Kodjak, 2/1)
In other pharmaceutical news, the Food and Drug Administration will help decide the fate of an antidepressant and Medicare drug-price negotiations would prove tricky —
STAT: This Antidepressant May Be No Better Than Cheaper Alternatives. But Demand Could Soon Soar.
Their antidepressant is expensive, and it isn’t selling well.But the drug makers behind the medication are betting they can give it a boost by marketing it to treat a whole new category of depression symptoms — namely, cloudy thinking. (Robbins, 2/2)
CQ Healthbeat: Medicare Drug Price Negotiations Would Trigger Thorny Issues
Presidential contenders from Donald Trump to Bernard Sanders support moves to allow Medicare to directly negotiate prices with drugmakers. But changing the law would require lawmakers to delve into difficult questions that could dramatically affect the amount of savings that would be generated and the scope of the government's leverage. The growing costs of Medicare’s Part D prescription drug program are expected to keep the program in the spotlight in this election year. Part D premiums are likely to increase by 13 percent from 2015 to 2016, after having been relatively flat in recent years, wrote Chuck Shih, senior officer for the specialty drugs research initiative at the Pew Charitable Trusts, and colleagues in a Monday blog post in Health Affairs. (Young, 2/1)
