The U.S. Senate Finance Committee met with seven Big Pharma executives for a hearing this Tuesday about the high cost of prescription drugs. Here is the published report and a response from the doctors at Main Line Rheumatology.
Nothing makes us sadder then when our patients tell us they have to choose between eating, or paying for their medications. Both pharmaceutical companies and insurance carriers collude to control prices of medications. This practice is legal, but of questionable moral ethics. A relatively small but common example is with the drug, colchicine, prescribed for gout. Colchicine, derived from the medicinal plant, autumn crocus, has been available in one form or another for well over 1,000 years. Ten years ago, the FDA gave exclusive rights to one drug company to manufacture, market and sell the drug, and the price went from 10 cents to $5, a pill. For patients taking this medication for months, the price increase is unconscionable.
The price of biologic drugs which we use for rheumatoid and psoriatic arthritis, among other diseases, has steadily risen despite the fact that no more research has gone into their development. One year’s use of the drugs, Humira or Enbrel, can cost in the range of $60,000, if you do not have appropriate insurance coverage. The same medicine, sold as a bio-similar (think of this as another name for generic) in the United Kingdom, costs approximately $5,000, annually. Despite the claims of the current administration, we are not underwriting the low cost of these drugs in every other country other than the United States. Pharmaceutical companies are still making a profit in other countries and making a gigantic profit, right here at home. The financial burden, of course, falls on patients - as profits are generated for insurance and pharmaceutical companies. Pennsylvania is finally taking a harder look at this obvious inequity. Hopefully there will be some change, but overcoming the power of lobbyists with a different agenda will be difficult.
#bigpharma #merck #johnsonandjohnson #pfizer #medicationpricing #medicationprices #medication #drugs #drugpricing #health #healthcare #patientcare #mainlinerheumatology #pharmaceutical #gout #arthritis #pharmaceuticalpricing Lankenau Medical Center Main Line Today Fifty5magazine The Philadelphia Inquirer
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