The Sen­ate fum­bles its first stab at phar­ma prof­i­teer­ing, keep­ing the is­sue front and cen­ter in 2017

End­points News as­sess­es the big bio­phar­ma R&D sto­ry this week in a spe­cial year-end send­off. Chances are, this is al­so what we’ll be talk­ing about in 2017. And it will cer­tain­ly be front and cen­ter at the up­com­ing J.P. Mor­gan Health­care Con­fer­ence.

The Sen­ate of­fers a weak re­sponse to price goug­ing

The Sen­ate this week high­light­ed just how lit­tle the bio­phar­ma in­dus­try needs to fear from law­mak­ers when it comes to con­trol­ling drug prices right now. In­ves­ti­gat­ing four clear cas­es of price goug­ing on old prod­ucts, two or­ches­trat­ed by Mar­tin Shkre­li, the Sen­ate pol­ished off a mix of dusty reg­u­la­to­ry in­cen­tives as their sug­ges­tion for rein­ing in prof­i­teer­ing: “spe­cial” pri­or­i­ty re­views when need­ed, vouch­ers to help re­ward a fast re­sponse, maybe a spe­cial reim­por­ta­tion pass to pro­vide cheap com­pe­ti­tion, a man­date to move gener­ics through the FDA faster. None of it would ac­tu­al­ly nip the whole thing in the bud. “It is pos­si­ble that the busi­ness mod­el pur­sued by the Valeants and Tur­ings of the world was at­trac­tive in part be­cause it was le­gal,” the re­port states, in a mas­sive un­der­state­ment. (Ya think?) Noth­ing the sen­a­tors sug­gest­ed would ac­tu­al­ly pre­vent the next Shkre­li from do­ing ex­act­ly the same thing. If law­mak­ers are un­will­ing to tack­le ob­vi­ous price goug­ing, then what are the chances they can ever come to grips with the much big­ger is­sue of sys­temic rip-offs, the an­nu­al price spikes that have kept Big Phar­ma look­ing healthy as their R&D ef­forts con­tin­ue to un­der­per­form?

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