Here are more stats for the price-increase tally: Twenty-seven drug brands took 20% price increases last year, and dozens saw prices at least double over the past 5 years, Bloomberg reports. Once again, the usual suspects top the price-increase lists. And diabetes products are conspicuously present.
With a 351% increase, Jazz Pharmaceuticals' ($JAZZ) narcolepsy drug Xyrem came in first place for 5-year hikes. Welchol, the Daiichi Sankyo cholesterol med, topped the list of last year's hikes with a 40.3% increase. Mylan's ($MYL) EpiPen came in close behind with a 32% increase.
The big price hikes covered a variety of diseases and drugs, many of them nearing the end of their patent lives. Drugmakers tend to raise the prices of aging meds, trying to eke out as much profit as they can as the patent clock runs out. Hence Sanofi's ($SNY) Renvela, one of 2014's biggest price hikes; that kidney drug went off patent last September. And Welchol, too; a patent settlement allowed generics to hit the market in early March 2015.
But as Bloomberg points out, there's a striking sameness in several drugs on the list of the biggest price hikes, both last year and over the last 5. Those would be the diabetes treatments Lantus (Sanofi), Novolog (Novo Nordisk), Levemir (also Novo Nordisk), and Humulin (Eli Lilly). Lantus and Levemir each went up by 29.9% in 2014; over the past 5, Levemir went up by 169% and Lantus by 168%. Plus, their price hikes came in tandem, Bloomberg notes, and in all-but-identical increments.
More on this article here. The big pharma greed knows no bounds. If they are not being fined $billions for fraud, falsifying trial data and withholding safety information, they are playing Russian roulette with peoples lives. At times they seem to have a lower standard of morals than crack cocaine dealers.
Eddie
This guy has got it spot on.
This guy has got it spot on.
3 comments:
We all the living proof that it is possible to use life-stile choices successfully to minimize own need in a bid Pharma products.
Eddie
You are still proof that any one can bullshit, and then sell out to the pharma and shovel down the meds, on your max dose of metformin.
Have the balls to stand by your diet and give it the boot, or admit the pharma are keeping you alive, and you're the biggest sellout of all.
Still on the bright side, it'll soon be time to get the helpers to wheel you down to the riverbank. At least the pharma will keep you there for a few more years, until you need to move onto their next offering, and sell out yet again.
Notice you haven't been upping the numbers on your completely dead forum, too much cheap plonk down the local?
Or maybe 'fine wine' as you call the house red?
Still, if it keeps you quiet, and your drivel off the forum I'm sure the rest of your little mob is more than happy to let you lie there.
Hi Eddie, I was reading your blog post above and saw that the diabetes link is broken. You publish some really great content on the matter. We actually have a resource on the subject you can find here: https://trulaw.com/diabetes/
Feel free to link to it to better the experience for your readers on the post. Thanks and reach out if you have any questions.
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