New York’s Attorney General’s office has announced that it is investigating Turing Pharmaceuticals after the company hiked up the price of a drug commonly used to treat HIV patients from $13.50 a pill to $750 a pill.
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Schneiderman has initiated an investigation of Turing for allegedly attempting to restrict distribution and thwart generic competition.
Turing Pharmaceuticals is not the only pharma company to recently raise the price of a life-saving drug-though his hike was by far the biggest.
The concern is that Daraprim’s hard-to-get status is intentional, and that Turing designed it that way–and why not, considering how much profit there is when an off-patent pill costs $750? The drug has been faraway from distribution by the standard wholesalers and by retail drugstores. And they requested a hearing on formulary and tiering structure for prescription medications offered through health exchanges.
“While competition might ordinarily be expected to deter such a massive price increase, it appears that Turing may have taken steps to prevent that competition from arising,” said the letter, a copy of which was obtained by the New York Times.
Yes it is absolutely a reaction – there were mistakes made with respect to helping people understand why we took this action, I think that it makes sense to lower the price in response to the anger that was felt by people.
It is one of the most common drugs prescribed to combat malaria and other life-threatening parasite infections. The letter tells him to contact the attorney general’s office and informs him that he is required to retain all documents that could be relevant to the probe.
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And, “for uninsured patients who meet financial-need criteria, Turing provides Daraprim with no out-of-pocket expense under the existing product patient assistance program”, the company said.
