Yet it could also be an area of common ground in Washington, depending on whether Trump takes up the banner for voters upset over pricing. An October pre-election survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that drug costs were the top health care issue for the next president. Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican, has proposed requiring drugmakers to report any price increase of more than 10 percent. Representative Elijah Cummings, a Democrat from Maryland, has led his party’s charge against high drug prices.
Drug CEOs
Some drug CEOs have recently come out to say they’re not aggressive price-takers. Merck & Co. CEO Ken Frazier said in an interview last week that his company has been restrained in raising the costs of its medicines. Saunders has already sought to distinguish his company from its peers with a pricing pledge that limits increases. Novo Nordisk A/S CEO Lars Rebien Sorsen said recently his company will cap increases.
Setting the cost of a drug is a murky process in the U.S. List prices are set by drugmakers, rebates are privately negotiated with intermediaries and the out-of-pocket cost customers pay at the pharmacy varies is based on whether or not they have insurance, and how good it is.
The U.S. doesn’t directly regulate medicine prices, unlike much of the rest of the globe. On Wednesday, Pfizer Inc. and Flynn Pharma Ltd. were fined a record amount for abusing a dominant position in the U.K. after they increased prices by 2,600 percent.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.