Robert King of the Washington Examiner reports on the impact of a lack of competition on drug prices.
Martin Shkreli became the “poster child” for high drug prices this week after raising the price of a decades-old treatment almost overnight, but the data shows he is far from the only generic drug maker to quickly raise prices.
Shkreli received a massive public backlash against his attempt to increase the price of a generic version of the drug Daraprim from $13.50 to more than $700. …
… There is a growing trend over the past five years of generic drug companies snagging old drugs with no competition and raising the price.
Take the price of the drug albendazole, used to treat a tapeworm infection. In 2010, the daily dose cost nearly $6. But in 2013, the listed price had increased to $119, according to a 2014 paper in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Another generic called captopril used for hypotension increased by more than 2,800 percent from 2012 to 2013, the journal article added. It increased from a little more than a penny to nearly 40 cents per pill.
Generics are still a low-cost alternative to brand-name drugs, and a drug that has lots of competition can’t raise prices dramatically without losing customers, Anderson said.
It’s the drugs that have been on the market for decades and have zero competition, like Daraprim, that see increases, [Johns Hopkins University professor Gerard] Anderson said.
“When there is only one manufacturer of a drug they have learned they can raise their price at least before a competitor gets in,” he added.
