Big Pharm's Greed and the Ever Rising Cost of Drugs [View all]

[McCamy Taylor]

Pharmacy Bro was not an aberration. He was just an overachiever. Here are some modern examples of price gouging by Big Pharm

1) take colchicine, an old generic, get a new FDA indication for a short course for gout and then the only colchicine on the market is the overpriced Colcrys

2) take guafenesin, the generic mucolytic in Robutussin and declare that one company, Mucinex owns a patent to it in pill form

3) Take Doxycyclne an old generic antibiotic that used to be $4, get a monopoly on th precursor ingredient and suddenly you can charge $50 or more dollars for a course

4) Take cefixime (used to be Suprax) the only generic oral third generation cephalosprin and got to court any time any other generic manufacturer tries to make it, meaning that a course can cost $200.

5) Bribe the Bush FDA to ban ergot (migraine) and quinine (restless leg) so that Glaxo-Smith-Kline can make more money selling Imitrex and Reqip.

6)Wait until Lyrica, the expensive version of gabapentin loses its patent to begin a public relations campaign aimed at driving gabapentin (cheap generic) from the market where it is widely used as a non-opiate chronic pain treatment.

7) Wait until your own product Seldane, at that time the only non-sedating antihistamine is about to go generic and petition the FDA to take it from the market due to rare side effects just as your company is about to release its new, patent non-sedating antihistamine.

8) Mylan raaised the price of Epi-Pen 500%--because they could.

9) and now Mylan is suddenly not producing Buspar (buspirone) a popular anti-anxiety med that is not a benzo creating national shortage and panic among anxiety patients. Wanna bet that when it comes back to the market, it will have a higher price?

Here is the Washington Post on how Big Pharm conspires to fix prices of generics.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/investigation-of-generic-cartel-expands-to-300-drugs/2018/12/09/fb900e80-f708-11e8-863c-9e2f864d47e7_story.html?utm_term=.3b6d925acafb