Pfizer Hikes Prices for Over 100 Drugs on January 1

[Fuddnik]

Source: NBCNews.com, Reuters


Pfizer Hikes Prices for Over 100 Drugs on January 1

by Reuters
Jan 8 2016, 11:42 pm ET


Pfizer Inc, which plans a $160-billion merger with Ireland-based Allergan Plc to slash its U.S. tax bill, on Jan. 1 raised U.S. prices for more than 100 of its drugs, some by as much as 20 percent, according to statistics compiled by global information services company Wolters Kluwer.

Pfizer confirmed a 9.4 percent increase for heavily advertised pain drug Lyrica, which generated $2.3 billion in 2014 U.S. sales; a 12.9 percent increase for erectile dysfunction drug Viagra, which had 2014 U.S. sales of $1.1 billion; and a 5 percent increase for Ibrance, a novel breast cancer drug launched last year at a list price of $9,850 per month, or $118,200 per year.

Company spokesman Steven Danehy could not immediately confirm the remaining price increases, which were compiled by a unit of Wolters Kluwer Health and published in a research note by UBS Securities.

(snip)

"Medicines are among the most effective and efficient use of private and public health care dollars," Pfizer said in an emailed statement.

(snip)

Read more: http://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/pfizer-hikes-prices-over-100-drugs-january-1-n493281

---

Motherfuckers want to gouge the public and the government. Then they want to get out of paying their taxes.
It's way past time for some HEAVY regulation of this entire industry.

[JDPriestly]

1. These are drugs that have been on the market for years.

The Republicans insist on allowing big pharma to take advantage of sick people in order to make big profits and then complain that Medicare costs too much.

The profit-gouging by big pharma pushes health-care costs, especially Medicare costs, up.

Our government should at least be free to negotiate prices on these drugs. There isn't a lot of R&D investment going into them.

[Fuddnik]

2. I always said that the real purpose of Medicare Part D was to bankrupt Medicare.

And fatten the coffers of Big Pharma.

[silvershadow]

3. I wouldn't doubt it a bit. nt

[DhhD]

12. The George W Bush Medicare Prescription Drug Plan is scheduled to end in 2020. Congress could

end it now. This price gouging is what a Republican controlled Congress will do for the pooring of America. What is the Sanders Plan to reign in drug costs? This new price hick just blew Hillary Clinton's 20% Plan away. Will her plan evolve to a 30% drop in drug prices?

The Down Ticket Revolution of Bernie Sanders is very very important.


http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/12/08/elec04.medicare/

Bush signs landmark Medicare bill into law
President Bush: 'Giving older Americans better choices'

President Bush signs the new Medicare legislation.

TIME.com: Reforming Medicare the Gingrich way

TIME.com: Medicare and more: Can we afford all this?
Interactive: Prescription for change
TIME.com: Howard Dean's Operation February external link
• Senate passes Medicare bill
• Interactive: Prescription coverage
• CNN Access: Senators disagree
• Confusion among the elderly
• Medicare deal announced

Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush on Monday signed into law landmark Medicare reform legislation that includes prescription drug benefits and has sparked a bitter fight between opponents and supporters.
snip
On the day it passed the Senate, Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee called the overhaul "epochal in the sense it modernizes Medicare to provide 21st century care for our seniors."

Opponents of the legislation warned that seniors would demand that Congress revisit the issue once they realized what the bill does and does not do. High on the list of things not covered in the bill is a mechanism to stem rising prescription drug costs. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, who supported the bill, said the lapse was a "major weakness in this bill."

"The theory is that private sector competition will drive down the cost of drugs," Feinstein said last month upon the bill's passage. "That may happen, or it may not happen. We need to watch that, and we will. I feel confident that the leadership will make changes if the cost containment is not kept."
more at link


Republicans including Bush and Senator Gingrich lied to Americans.

[Hortensis]

25. "How Pfizer Set the Cost of Its New Drug at $9,850 a Month.

Days before Pfizer Inc. was to set the price for a new breast-cancer drug called Ibrance, it got a surprise: A competitor raised the monthly cost of a rival treatment by nearly a thousand dollars.

Three years of market research—a stretch that started almost as soon as the new treatment showed promise in the laboratory—was suddenly in doubt. After carefully calibrating the price to be close to rivals and to keep doctors and insurers happy, Pfizer was left wondering if its list price of $9,850 a month for the pills was too low.

“What do you think if we take that up?” asked Albert Bourla, Pfizer’s executive overseeing cancer drugs, speaking to his colleagues at the final price-setting meeting last January.

It was a tricky issue. Drug companies have been reaching for new heights of pricing. They routinely raise the cost of older medicines and then peg new ones to these levels. Yet Pfizer knew setting a price too high for Ibrance might backfire ..."

From the Wall Street Journal: http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-art-of-setting-a-drug-price-1449628081

[PatSeg]

18. It certainly wasn't

to benefit seniors.

[Enthusiast]

4. Their greed will force the USA to adopt Medicare for All with strict drug price controls.

[RKP5637]

5. I hope so! It's time for this bullshit to end!!! We also need a congress that's not on the take!

For many of these guys getting elected to congress is to fatten their wallet.

[Enthusiast]

11. I require several daily medications. For every price increase in these medications my discretionary

spending is reduced. Things I want to buy, other products, are now out of my reach. It is not in the interest of a healthy economy to unnecessarily burden the American people with super high drug prices.

[Hortensis]

24. Our best to you, Enthusiast. Damn, we need

to put a leash on greed.

[djean111]

6. Wonder what will happen when government-mandated private insurance and all the money that

flows from us to them and then to hospitals, Big Pharma, etc. - starts to wrestle with the MIC for our money? My guess is neither will give up their huge and ever increasing slice of the pie - they will go after social programs and infrastructure. The GOP and the DINOs will enthusiastically enable them.

[Ford_Prefect]

8. The MIC and Big Pharma already co-ordinate. One produces the consumer for the other.

I suspect they are heavily cross invested as well.

[DhhD]

13. We need Bernie Sanders to stand for the people against the Oligarchs.

[hobbit709]

7. Is anyone surprised by this?

[Plucketeer]

15. Not surprized at all!

These greed merchants make leeches look downright friendly.

[TNNurse]

9. All too believable

Dilantin is a very old drug....just how do they explain raising it's price?

[PatSeg]

19. Sadly

They don't have to explain the increases. It appears that the Pharmaceutical industry can do pretty much anything it wants. I've had medications increase two or three fold without any change in the product.

[nyabingi]

10. I agree

These big pharma companies are nothing more than legalized dope dealers who have peddled so many opiates to the public that we're now faced with an epidemic of overdose deaths.

[NCjack]

14. Mergers and relocations to Europe aren't free. The American customers pay the bill. /nt

[ChairmanAgnostic]

16. That's so Hedge-Fundish of them

[Progressive dog]

17. True --but

this is left out of the OP.

"It is important to note that the list price does not reflect the considerable discounts offered to the government, managed care organizations, and commercial health plans and certain programs that restrict any increases above the inflation rate."

[Geronimoe]

20. TIKOSYN® (dofetilide)

This is a drug from the 60s, that only Pfizer makes. If was 50 cents a pill two years ago. Now it is $15 a pill. Patients need to take two pills a day for a cost of $400 to $600 per month.

[gvstn]

21. Funny

The U.S. taxes people working overseas but doesn't tax corporations. Aren't corporations people now?

I guess if I got a job in England that paid me a million dollars I could just keep the money offshore and return home without paying any taxes. Sounds like a good deal.

[hill2016]

28. not if you are a US Citizen or Permanent Resident

You still have to pay US Federal taxes on the job in England

You could of course renounce your citizenship before taking that job so as not to pay US taxes on income earned overseas, which is exactly why a company like Pfizer is doing so (moving domicile out of the US)

[gvstn]

30. Are they actually removing domicile out of US?

They get no U.S. protections then? They are an Irish company.

[davidpdx]

29. Actually for most countries you don't pay taxes if you work overseas

It depends if the US has a tax treaty with the specific country. Here in Korea as long as you don't make over $97,500 (roughly) then you do not pay taxes. What sucks is you still have to file your taxes though.

[Left Coast2020]

22. Another reason to elect Bernie

That's about the only way I see this shit ending. And then they don't want to pay their taxes? What a bunch of unAmerican scumbags.

[jtuck004]

23. They sure are lucky they work at Pfizer. If they worked at a hardware store and doubled the

price of plywood to $39 during a hurricane, they might get arrested and thrown in the pokey.

[PumpkinAle]

26. And I am sick of hearing it is because of Obamacare

when it comes down to greed and control by the drug and insurance companies.

[questionseverything]

27. cost controls should of been the first step in obamacare

instead the law makes it illegal to negotiate pharma prices

[PumpkinAle]

31. Agree

the big mistake was letting the insurance and pharmaceuticals sit at the table.