Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Outgoing Valeant CEO To Testify At Senate Drug Pricing Hearing
The Wall Street Journal: Valeant’s Outgoing CEO To Testify At Senate Hearing On Drug Prices
Michael Pearson, the outgoing chief executive at Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc., is expected to testify next month in front of a Senate committee investigating increases in the prices of certain prescription drugs. The Senate Aging Committee, which is holding the hearing, said it sent Mr. Pearson a subpoena. According to the committee, its hearing on April 27 will “examine how Valeant Pharmaceuticals dramatically increased the price of certain lifesaving drugs that it acquired.” (Stahl, 3/28)
Bloomberg: Sprout Investors Say Valeant Overcharging For Female Libido Pill
Investors in Sprout, the female libido pill maker bought by Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc. for $1 billion last year, said Valeant has failed to successfully commercialize the treatment by setting the price too high and neglecting to market it, putting the drugmaker at risk of violating the merger agreement. (Koons, 3/28)
Bloomberg: U.S. Seeks Records Of 80,000 Novartis 'Sham' Events For Doctors
The U.S. is asking Novartis AG to provide records of about 80,000 “sham” events in which the government says doctors were wined and dined so they would prescribe the company’s cardiovascular drugs to their patients. (Pettersson, 3/27)
KQED: Truvada, The Miracle HIV Drug Few People Take, Suffers Another Setback
The first documented case of HIV infection by someone adhering to the prescribed regimen for the preventive HIV drug Truvada was reported at a medical conference last month. (Brooks, 3/28)
Meanwhile, in other pharmaceutical news —
Reuters: Biosimilar Drugs Could Save Up To $110B By 2020
Lower-cost copies of complex biotech drugs, known as biosimilars, could save the United States and Europe's five top markets as much as 98 billion euros ($110 bln) by 2020, a new analysis showed on Tuesday. Realizing those savings, however, depends on effective doctor education and healthcare providers adopting smart market access strategies, the report by IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics said. (3/27)
Kaiser Health News: Mortgages For Expensive Health Care? Some Experts Think It Can Work.
A Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist and Harvard oncologist have a proposal to get highly effective but prohibitively expensive drugs into consumers’ hands: health care installment loans. Writing last month in the journal Science Translational Medicine, the authors liken drug loans to mortgages, noting that both can enable consumers to buy big-ticket items requiring a hefty up-front payment that they could not otherwise afford. Some consumer advocates and health insurance experts see it differently. (Andrews, 3/29)
Reuters: U.S. Lawmakers Want Health Agencies To Lower Prostate Cancer Drug Cost
A group of lawmakers is calling on the National Institutes of Health and Department of Health and Human Services to step in and reduce the cost of Medivation Inc's and Astellas Pharma Inc's prostate cancer drug Xtandi. In the letter signed by Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and Reps. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) and Peter Welch (D-Vt.), the lawmakers urged NIH to hold a public hearing to consider overriding the patent on Xtandi to make the drug available at a lower price. (Kelly, 3/28)
