Consumer Confidential: Obama’s Budget Plan Would Allow Greater Scrutiny Of High Drug Prices
Buried deep within President Obama’s $4 trillion budget plan are a couple of health care proposals that could change everything for U.S. consumers. The fact that the drug industry wasted no time in dismissing the ideas — and that their Republican friends in Congress said they wouldn’t even look at them — should tell you something big was afoot. The Department of Health and Human Services broke out Obama’s health care proposals in a...
Consumer Confidential: Drugmakers Preying on the Sick
Congress tried to show it feels America’s pain over high prescription-drug costs by calling Martin Shkreli to account. Shkreli is the former head of Turing Pharmaceuticals, currently out on $5 million bail after being charged with securities fraud and conspiracy. He became the face of Big Pharma greed after jacking up the price of a one-of-a-kind infection medication by 5,000 percent. Shkreli clammed up by citing his Fifth Amendment...
What Unites Congress? Scorn For Shkreli
Washington — A smirking Martin Shkreli briefly united Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill last week, as lawmakers took turns blasting the price-hiking former CEO who has become the new poster child for corporate greed. But the gridlocked state of Congress virtually assures federal efforts to lower drug prices will remain in limbo for years. And even then, experts warn that the options available to Congress would not stop...
Senate Probing Drug Price Spikes
Washington — A Senate committee has launched an investigation into exorbitant drug price hikes by Turing Pharmaceuticals and three other companies, responding to public anxiety over rising prices for critical medicines. The Senate’s special committee on aging requested documents and information Wednesday from Turing, Valeant Pharmaceuticals and two other drugmakers already under scrutiny for recent price spikes. Notably, the senators...
Consumer Confidential: How a $500 Copay Turned Into a $3,900 Bill
Nobody wants to get sick. But if you do get sick, what you really don’t want is an illness that requires a so-called specialty drug. These are the high-priced drugs you’ve seen in the news lately, such as the hepatitis C drug Sovaldi. It costs an eye-popping $1,000 a pill. Or the tuberculosis drug cycloserine, which had cost about $500 for 30 capsules. It soared overnight to nearly $11,000 after being acquired by a new manufacturer...
