Feb 11, 2022 11:47 PM
There's already a law on the books that could lower prescription drug prices — but no one's using it
https://www.salon.com/2022/02/11/theres-...-using-it/
EXCERPTS: The prostate cancer drug Xtandi, discovered with taxpayer money from the National Institutes for Health and the US Army, is sold in the US by Japanese company Astellas Pharma at five times the price it is sold in Japan. The cancer treatment retails at $130 per 40mg capsule — which mean that unless the roughly 250,000 US men who suffer from prostate cancer have good health insurance, they will pay nearly $190,000 per year for the lifesaving cancer treatment.
That price tag might seem absurd for a drug invented by the public sector. And indeed, there is actually a law on the books already that could be called upon to stop Americans from being ripped off. Unfortunately, past administrations have refused to use it.
In 1980 Congress passed the Bayh-Dole Act, which gave universities, research institutions, and pharmaceutical companies the right to own and commercialize the patents to inventions developed with federal funding...
[...] In the 40 years since the enactment of Bayh-Dole, a lot of Big Pharma lobbying money has been spent to make sure drug prices are anything but reasonable. Americans pay on average 256 times more for prescription drugs than other developed countries, despite the fact that the US government, through the National Institutes for Health (NIH), is the single biggest funder of medical research grants in the world with a 2021 budget of almost $52 billion...
[...] The drug company then performs the finishing touches of the last phases of clinical trials and then packages up the medicine and sells it to Americans at stupid prices. The march-in rights were put in place to prevent that last part. ... To date the march-in orders have never been used, despite multiple petitions to Health and Human Services (HHS) for the government to step in.
[...] The pharma industry, unsurprisingly, is against using march-in orders because it claims that any state intervention would create uncertainty and make drug companies reluctant to invest in early-stage government funded research...
[...] Another argument often heard against using march-in orders is that the two drafters of the law, Senators Bob Dole and Birch Evans Bayh, said after leaving Congress that the provision "on reasonable terms" was never meant to include pricing...
There is reason to hope that this time around things might be different. [...] On July 9th the Biden administration issued an executive order opposing Trump's attempt to narrow the definition of reasonable pricing terms, which sent a loud signal to the pharma industry that march-in orders could soon be under way.
[...] The advantage of using the march-in orders to control pricing is that Biden could lower drug costs without needing a single vote from any Republican congressman. Between 2012 and 2019 Medicare dished out $5.8 billion for Xtandi even though the government already paid for some of the initial research. The US government could reduce spending by as much as 80% if the drug was brought in line with the same prices paid by Canada, Australia or Japan... (MORE - missing details)
https://www.salon.com/2022/02/11/theres-...-using-it/
EXCERPTS: The prostate cancer drug Xtandi, discovered with taxpayer money from the National Institutes for Health and the US Army, is sold in the US by Japanese company Astellas Pharma at five times the price it is sold in Japan. The cancer treatment retails at $130 per 40mg capsule — which mean that unless the roughly 250,000 US men who suffer from prostate cancer have good health insurance, they will pay nearly $190,000 per year for the lifesaving cancer treatment.
That price tag might seem absurd for a drug invented by the public sector. And indeed, there is actually a law on the books already that could be called upon to stop Americans from being ripped off. Unfortunately, past administrations have refused to use it.
In 1980 Congress passed the Bayh-Dole Act, which gave universities, research institutions, and pharmaceutical companies the right to own and commercialize the patents to inventions developed with federal funding...
[...] In the 40 years since the enactment of Bayh-Dole, a lot of Big Pharma lobbying money has been spent to make sure drug prices are anything but reasonable. Americans pay on average 256 times more for prescription drugs than other developed countries, despite the fact that the US government, through the National Institutes for Health (NIH), is the single biggest funder of medical research grants in the world with a 2021 budget of almost $52 billion...
[...] The drug company then performs the finishing touches of the last phases of clinical trials and then packages up the medicine and sells it to Americans at stupid prices. The march-in rights were put in place to prevent that last part. ... To date the march-in orders have never been used, despite multiple petitions to Health and Human Services (HHS) for the government to step in.
[...] The pharma industry, unsurprisingly, is against using march-in orders because it claims that any state intervention would create uncertainty and make drug companies reluctant to invest in early-stage government funded research...
[...] Another argument often heard against using march-in orders is that the two drafters of the law, Senators Bob Dole and Birch Evans Bayh, said after leaving Congress that the provision "on reasonable terms" was never meant to include pricing...
There is reason to hope that this time around things might be different. [...] On July 9th the Biden administration issued an executive order opposing Trump's attempt to narrow the definition of reasonable pricing terms, which sent a loud signal to the pharma industry that march-in orders could soon be under way.
[...] The advantage of using the march-in orders to control pricing is that Biden could lower drug costs without needing a single vote from any Republican congressman. Between 2012 and 2019 Medicare dished out $5.8 billion for Xtandi even though the government already paid for some of the initial research. The US government could reduce spending by as much as 80% if the drug was brought in line with the same prices paid by Canada, Australia or Japan... (MORE - missing details)