Even if you don’t take Daraprim — and only about 2,000 patients a year do — you’ve probably heard about it. That’s the 62-year-old drug whose price rocketed from $13.50 a pill to $750 a few months ago. ADVERTISING Even
Even if you don’t take Daraprim — and only about 2,000 patients a year do — you’ve probably heard about it. That’s the 62-year-old drug whose price rocketed from $13.50 a pill to $750 a few months ago.
Why the increase of more than 5,000 percent? The drug — which treats toxoplasmosis, a potentially life-threatening parasitic infection — didn’t change. But the drug’s owner did. Turing Pharmaceuticals bought the rights to Daraprim in August, and capitalized on what essentially was a monopoly. It hiked the price … and drew the wrath of doctors, patient advocacy groups and politicians.
Turing CEO Martin Shkreli said Thursday that he did the right thing hiking the price of the drug. The company said it will offer discounts of up to 50 percent to hospitals. The company also said it would offer financial assistance to patients so they could afford the drug. But many people think that price still is too high. …
Last year, U.S. spending on prescription drugs rocketed by 13 percent to $374 billion. That’s the biggest jump since 2001, according to a report by the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics.
Drug companies launched 42 novel medicines last year. Of those, 18 were so-called “orphan drugs” that treat rare diseases affecting relatively small numbers of people. That’s a record number of orphan drugs in a year. Ten of those new drugs were breakthrough therapies to treat an array of maladies, from multiple sclerosis to several forms of cancer.
Last year was “remarkable,” Murray Aitken, executive director of the IMS Institute, said. “We’re probably not going to see it again.”
We hope he’s wrong. A thriving prescription drug industry drives medical innovation in America and around the globe. Conditions that once prompted emergency room visits and surgeries now can be controlled via drug therapies.
Rising drug costs can be harrowing, particularly for people on fixed incomes. But the cure is more competition, not more government regulation. …
The best price for Daraprim or any other drug? We don’t know. Nor does the government. The market decides.
— Chicago Tribune
