Tired of be­ing gouged for old, cheap ther­a­pies, a con­sor­tium of hos­pi­tals is go­ing in­to the drug busi­ness — NYT

Over the past few years we’ve seen plen­ty of pub­lic out­rage over re­peat­ed cas­es where the price of a close­ly con­trolled gener­ic has shot up sud­den­ly, goug­ing pay­ers with nowhere to turn.

But even as law­mak­ers and reg­u­la­tors seem pow­er­less to do any­thing to stop the prac­tice, which is per­fect­ly le­gal un­der ex­ist­ing laws, a big group of hos­pi­tals has come up with a plan to fight back.

In a sto­ry this morn­ing in The New York Times, Reed Abel­son and Katie Thomas re­port that a con­sor­tium of ma­jor hos­pi­tal sys­tems in the US — in­clud­ing the gi­ant non­prof­it As­cen­sion — are cre­at­ing a non­prof­it drug com­pa­ny that can pro­vide a steady and eco­nom­i­cal flow of key drugs that are ei­ther in short sup­ply or over­priced, or both.

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