CEO DATELINE - Activist group urges BIO to boot member after drug price hike
CEO DATELINE - Activist group urges BIO to boot member after drug price hike
- March 8, 2019 |
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Walt Williams
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An activist group is urging the Biotechnology Innovation Organization to expel a member company after the company increased the price of a drug for a rare neuromuscular disorder from free to more than $300,000 per year.
Catalyst Pharmaceuticals announced in February it would charge more than $300,000 per year for the drug Firdapse, which is used to treat Lambert-Eaton Myasthenic Syndrome, according to Reuters news service. The drug had previously been free through the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's "compassionate use" program, but Catalyst acquired the rights to produce the medicine in 2012 and was recently given the go-ahead by federal officials to sell it at the higher price. https://reut.rs/2Hj4FdL
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) sent a letter to Catalyst in February expressing concern about the high price. However, the group Patients for Affordable Medicine, or P4AD, decided to go a different route and instead pressure BIO to punish the company.
"Catalyst says it will offer payment assistance to patients. But private insurance or government programs will still foot the bill for the bulk of the cost—meaning higher premiums and higher taxes for patients and all Americans," the group said in an open letter to BIO CEO Jim Greenwood.
Booting Catalyst from BIO would not be without precedent. The association expelled Turing Pharmaceuticals and its CEO Martin Shkreli in 2015 after his company received wide criticism for hiking the price of a life-saving medication by more than 4,000 percent.
Both BIO and Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America have defended price hikes in the past by saying they are needed to help companies recoup the cost of research and development of the drugs. However, P4AD countered that Catalyst didn't put any R&D into Firdapse but had instead acquired an inexpensive drug and jacked up the price.
BIO has not responded to the letter as of Friday morning.
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