The Hill (10/18, Hill link) “Floor Action” blog reported that “Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) called on the Obama administration to prevent the increasing costs of generic drugs.”
In a letter to HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell, they wrote, “The federal government must act immediately and aggressively to address the increasing costs of these drugs.”
The New York Times and the LA Times wrote about this problem in July.
Blogfinger Medical Commentary by Paul Goldfinger, MD, FACC
When I was in training in the late ’60’s, we were taught that generic drugs were just as good as branded drugs, although sometimes doctors didn’t trust the generics. At that time there were no drug plans and everyone paid out of pocket, so generics were financially desirable, but the doctor had to remember to ask for the generic versions. Over the years, the FDA made sure that the generics were the equal of their patented forefathers.
These days, when prescription drugs are often very expensive, more doctors are understanding the financial burdens for patients and they order generics whenever possible by checking “may substitute.” Currently, 80% of prescriptions are for generics.
In recent years, many patients have found that they can get generics for most of their medications, so their costs have dropped. But now, some generic prices are skyrocketing. A few medicines have gone up as high as 600% or more, and these high prices are not necessarily for new exotic drugs. Sometimes these newly expensive generics are for drugs that have been around forever such as digoxin—-a heart pill, and for metopralol succinate ER—-a beta blocker for blood pressure.
At first glance there doesn’t seem to be a good reason for a really cheap old workhorse medicine to suddenly become unaffordable. But here are ways that such increases can occur:
1. Many big pharmaceutical companies have seen their inventories of highly profitable patented blockbuster drugs decline. Their pipeline of new drugs is barren and/or their patents have run out on big-time medicines such as the cholesterol lowering drug Lipitor. To protect their profits, many have looked around and noticed that generic drugs are really cheap. So they buy out some generic manufacturers to reduce the number of suppliers or they work a deal with generic companies not to make certain drugs once the patents expire. Then, as the competition disappears, they raise the generic prices substantially, and no one can stop them.
2. The problem has hit seniors with Medicare Part D drug plans as well as younger individuals who have drug benefits from their insurance companies. If the government/ insurance company has to pay more for generics, then the copays or the premiums are going up. For example, one plan that offered #90 metopralol 50 mg. tabs for a $5.00 copay in January raised the price to $75.00 in July.
But, as we see above, the government is currently paying attention, so now we have Congress taking a look at this situation. However, who knows what will happen when the Big Pharm lobbyists show up in D.C.
3. The generic pharm. industry says that most generic drugs are still cheap–only some have gone up substantially. That remains to be seen.
4. Another reason seems to be that raw materials have become scarce. We don’t know how true that is either.
For those of you who have been loving the drop in your prescription drug costs, you will want to be alert to this issue.
Last I checked, this is still the United States. The United States is a free market economy. Manufacturers of products are free to charge whatever they want.
Anyone who follows the drug industry knows that hundreds of thousands of jobs have been cut in the US pharmaceutical industry in the last 5 years — many of them in New Jersey. Share prices of drug companies are half of what they were 10 years ago. Drug industry R&D spending has been substantially reduced (not good for those of us who will go on to get Alzheimer’s or one of many other conditions with no/poor treatments available today). No one can say the drug industry is rolling in profits as they were in the 1990s. Let them have their price increases — this industry is too important to destroy.