The House Committee on Oversight and Reform (COR) held a hearing today with CEOs of three pharmaceutical companies Teva, Celgene and Bristol Myers Squibb (which acquired Celgene) over drug pricing and drug price gouging.
The committee also released two reports, based on an 18-month investigation, that expose the internal strategies used by these companies to repeatedly jack up prices of their blockbuster drugs revlimid and copaxone and to keep lower-cost alternatives off the market.
Here is Rep. Katie Porter grilling the CEO of Celgene using her signature white board and her signature prosecutorial style and gravitas. Take a look before we dive deeper into the reports and hearings.
Katie Porter had Mark Alles (CEO of Celgene before its acquisition) squirming as she laid out fact after fact on the White Board. He had no straight answers for why the price of the drug revlimid went from $215 in 2005 to $763 now. Watch Katie Porter summarize the findings with these scathing words —
Did the drug start to work faster? Were there fewer side effects? How did you change the formula or production of Revlimid to justify this price increase? To recap here: The drug didn’t get any better, the cancer patients didn’t get any better, you just got better at making money, you just refined your skills at price gouging.
Check out some reactions to Katie Porter’s epic takedown at twitter.com/...
Earlier, Rep. Carolyn Maloney took the CEO of Teva to task for similar shenanigans with price increases, increases that were done because they could.
Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) is the chair of the committee, the position held previously by Elijah Cummings.
www.statnews.com/… reports on Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s grilling of Teva’s CEO Kåre Schultz — “forcing him to describe how the company uses charity programs to boost their sales. When Schultz insisted that the programs weren’t used to make money, she pulled out internal documents showing Teva mapped out return on investments from their charity programs” and eviscerated him with these words -
In my district, Mr. Schultz, we call this a side hustle. Your pharmaceutical company makes these so-called charitable donations so you look like you give a shit about sick people. But in reality these are just another scheme by your corporation to make money off of sick people.
Others Democratic leaders who questioned the CEOs included Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), Rep. John Sarbanes (D-MD) and Ayanna Pressley (D-MA).
Here is another summary of the drug pricing issue being tackled by Democrats in the House. The link in the tweet takes you to the Committee on Oversight and Reform web site and the reports.
The hearings will continue tomorrow.
More on the reports from www.statnews.com/… -
Both reports also attempt to refute the reasons drug makers often give to justify price hikes. The committee notes, for example, that both companies were not using increased revenues to pay for new clinical studies: Teva only spent $689 million on Copaxone-related research since 1987 — just 2% of the roughly $34 billion it took in net revenue for the drug over the last two decades, according to the report.
The reports are likely to reignite calls, particularly from Democrats, to pass substantial drug pricing reforms. In a Dear Colleague letter accompanying the report, Oversight Chairman Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) emphasized the need to pass H.R. 3, House Democrats’ signature drug pricing bill, which would let Medicare negotiate directly with drug companies over the prices of their products.
The report, and the high-profile hearings, will also give Democrats an opportunity to show themselves the party most serious about lowering drug prices ahead of the November election. Recent polling from the Kaiser Family Foundation has shown that voters believe Trump is more serious about lowering drug prices than Biden. While Trump has made lowering prices a signature initiative of his first term, and has rolled out at least half a dozen policies to achieve that goal, he’s struggled to enact lasting reforms.
“As the November election draws near, President Trump is scrambling to create the impression that he is addressing a problem he has failed to take on for the past four years,” Maloney wrote.
Please check out the references below for more details on these important reports and hearings.
The annual price of Revlimid is eye-popping, as reported by I-MAK, “a team of lawyers, scientists, and health experts increasing access to affordable medicines by making sure the patent system works for the public”, which provided research for the reports -
What this shows is that Democrats understand the systemic reasons for high drug prices, are insistent on doing their oversight work and are looking for solutions that reduce drug prices while keeping innovation and competition flourishing. This is unlike trump and republicans, who are all about bamboozling the public with deceptive schemes and $200 bribes to seniors, that accomplish little to address the underlying problem and only serve to pad the pockets of Big Pharma CEOs and shareholders, all on the backs of hard-working Americans.
Further Reading
- ‘You just got better at making money’: Democrats blast Celgene, Teva for price hikes detailed in internal documents — www.statnews.com/…
- Congressional investigation reveals Celegene, Teva plotted to keep drug prices high — www.statnews.com/…
- Drug Pricing Investigation : Celgene and Bristol Myers Squibb - Revlimid — oversight.house.gov/…
- Drug Pricing Investigation : Teva — Copaxone - oversight.house.gov/…
Committee Begins Releasing Staff Reports on Skyrocketing Drug Prices As Six CEOs Testify This Week — oversight.house.gov/…