The list gets longer: Mer­ck, Al­ler­gan, No­var­tis is­sue 2020 drug price hikes — re­port

The price train con­tin­ues chug­ging in one di­rec­tion.

On Fri­day, a trio of drug­mak­ers — US-based Mer­ck, Ire­land-head­quar­tered Al­ler­gan and Swiss drug­mak­er No­var­tis — is­sued a round of hikes on more than 100 med­i­cines, vault­ing the to­tal num­ber of price rais­es on 445 drugs in 2020, Reuters re­port­ed, cit­ing health­care re­search firm 3 Ax­is Ad­vi­sors.

These spikes fol­low those by a cadre of drug­mak­ers in­clud­ing GSK, Pfiz­er, Gilead, Bris­tol-My­ers, Bio­gen, Lil­ly, and Te­va ear­li­er in the first week of 2020. In most cas­es, the stick­er price in­creas­es have been lim­it­ed to the mid-sin­gle-dig­it per­cent­ages. As the spot­light on drug pric­ing in­ten­si­fied, with pa­tients, pol­i­cy­mak­ers, and politi­cians de­cry­ing the mag­ni­tude and fre­quen­cy of hikes, a raft of drug­mak­ers — led by Al­ler­gan CEO Brent Saun­ders — pre­vi­ous­ly pledged to not raise their prices by more than 10% an­nu­al­ly.

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