Dec. 05--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 was essentially 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 has said it will offer discounts of up to 50 percent to hospitals. The company also has said it would offer financial assistance to patients so that they could afford the drug. But many people think that price is still too high.
Enter Express Scripts, the nation's largest prescription drug manager. The company announced Tuesday that it will partner with a small drug compounder that recently began making an alternative medicine that should be just as effective. The kicker: The price is $1 per capsule.
That's great news for people with HIV, pregnant women and others with weakened immune systems who need the drug.
Dr. Steve Miller, chief medical officer of Express Scripts, said the company would share its "extremely cost-effective" treatment with other payers to make sure all appropriate patients around the country have access to the treatment they need at the lowest possible price.
Bravo. That's the way market competition works. Your move, Mr. Shkreli.
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, tells us. "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 across the globe. Conditions that once prompted emergency room visits and surgeries can now 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, which could lead to drug rationing. We think the government could spur competition by allowing Americans to buy prescription drugs from other countries if they're manufactured in environments that meet rigorous U.S. standards.
The best price for Daraprim or any other drug? We don't know. Nor does the government. The market decides.
