Are All Pharma CEOs Martin Shkrelis?

Martin Shkreli claims he was arrested because he tried to maximize his company's profits by raising the price of a life-saving drug. There is no doubt that may have been a factor in the timing of the arrest, which resulted in even more attention to common practices employed by the drug industry to keep drug prices high and maximize profits as this NYT editorial points out.

NYT Editors: Shkreli No Different Than Other Pharma Leaders

Street Prices of Rx Brand-Name Drugs Increase as Much as 400%!

Drug companies always claim that the wholesale price of drugs is not an good indicator of what patients, insurers, and the government pay. So a new study published in JAMA Dermatology looked at the retail prices 19 brand-name prescription dermatologic drugs sold at four national chain pharmacies in the West Palm Beach, Fla., area (Costco, CVS, Sam’s Club and Walgreens) in 2009, 2011, 2014 and 2015.

The authors found that between 2009 and 2015:

• Prices of all surveyed classes of brand-name drugs increased; the average increase was 401 percent. Prices of topical antineoplastic drugs had the greatest average absolute and percentage increase of nearly $10,927 and 1,240 percent. 
• Prices of drugs in the antiinfective class had the smallest average absolute increase of almost $334. 
• Prices of psoriasis medications had the smallest average percentage increase of 180 percent. 
• The retail prices of seven drugs more than quadrupled during the study period, with the vast majority of price increases occurring after 2011. 

“Percent increases for multiple, frequently prescribed medications greatly outpaced inflation, national health expenditure growth, and increases in reimbursement for physician services,” the study concludes.

There was one surprising finding.

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Increased DTC Advertising and Rising Drug Prices - Is There a Causal Link?

There's no denying two facts:

FACT #1: Spending on prescription drugs is increasing dramatically. The Chicago Tribune, quoting data from IMS health, reported (here) that "Spending [in 2014] rose 13 percent [vs. 2013], the biggest jump since 2001, to a total of $374 billion" and

FACT #2: Spending on Direct-to-Consumer Advertising (DTCA) of prescription drugs is also increasing - more so, in fact. Kanter Media reported that the drug industry increased measured media ad spending by 19% in 2014 vs 2013 to $4.5 Bn (see chart below).

Click on chart for an enlarged view.

Is there a causal link between these two facts? Does DTC advertising raise the cost of drugs?

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Bernie Sanders Blasts FDA Commish Nominee Califf on Drug Reimportation

Senator Bernie Sanders laid into FDA Commissioner nominee Robert Califf during yesterday's Senate hearing. Here's a snippet of his comments regarding reimportation of Rx drugs as a means to lower drug prices - an issue of importance to 91% of voters (for more on that, read this):

Bernie Sanders to Robert Califf: "You're Not the One."

Meme: "Yer talkin' Pish," Says Pfizer Chief Bean Counter Ian Read

In a Forbes interview, Pfizer's CEO (an accountant, born in Scotland no less) was quoted as saying to employees: “I’m not going to talk about mission or vision. We’ve got to talk about imperatives.” Namely, cutting costs and pleasing shareholders.

He also said some other interesting things.

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Some - Not All - Americans Hate Pharma More Than Ever, Says Gallup Poll

The story came to me via Google Alerts: "People in the US Hate Big Pharma, Study Finds." At first, my reaction was Duh! Nothing to see here, considering all the pushback from physicians and other stakeholders (including patients?) regarding high drug prices.

I clicked through anyway to the story on teleSUR (a Latin American multimedia platform - how does it get included in Google Alerts whereas this blog does not?). Perhaps something was lost in translation - perhaps a better translation would have been the title I'm using for this post. 

In any case, here's the trending data direct from Gallup (here), which surveyed 1,011 U.S. adults in in the first week of August 2015 via telephone:

Click on image for an enlarged view.

IMHO, the saw-tooth trend indicates a love-hate relationship. Last year (2014) pharma gained respect, this year it lost it - but not as much as in most previous years. 

Also, there are some segments of the population that have a positive view of the pharmaceutical industry. Can you guess who?

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A Patient Journey Story Pharma Wishes Wasn't Told

Attend any pharma marketing  conference these days and most likely you will hear these buzzwords: "storytelling" and "patient journey."

For example, at iPharma 2015, Brandon Graham, Chief Creative Officer, EUXmedia, talked about "storytelling" and the "patient journey" and how to effectively use video to follow a typical patient in their "journey" from pre-diagnosis through therapy (read more about that here).

I hate to tell you this, but the news media does a much better job following Graham's advice than any pharma company I know. But media stories more often than not portray pharma as the villain, not the shinning knight that rides in to save the damsel in distress!

Take, for example, last night's NBC Nightly News story about Lauren Baumann, a cancer patient who manages her chronic myeloid leukemia by taking Gleevec, a medicine developed by Novartis (after much pushing & shoving by cancer patient advocates -- but that's another story).

What's her story? Why was it told on national TV? And what should have been done to prevent the story in the first place?

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R&D Cost for Generics is Zero. Nothing. Nada. Nilch. So Why are Their Prices Surging?

According to the latest estimate from Tufts economists, it now costs upwards of $2.6 billion to bring a new prescription drug to market (read "Cost to Bring a New Drug to Market Is $2.6 Billion According to Tufts - 3X More Than in 2003!"). Other estimates range from $59 million to $1.5 billion.

But the gap in price between generic drugs and brand-name drugs in narrowing. Why?

Generic Drugs Kept Health Care Cheaper for 30 Years. Why Are Their Prices Surging?