Oversight Committee unleashes scathing drug pricing report as Senate preps to vote on allowing Medicare negotiations
ByZachary Brennan
Senior Editor. Endpoints
Back in January 2019, the late House Oversight Committee chair Elijah Cummings kicked off a nearly 3-year-long drug pricing investigation that culminated today in a major new report detailing how prices for vital drugs have risen substantially since their launch, while calling on the Senate to pass a bill that will allow Medicare to negotiate some prices.
The committee’s investigation focused on 12 of the most expensive drugs for Medicare, showing massive price spikes that have accumulated over the years and made some drugs, like insulin, entirely unaffordable for some, to the point where some diabetics have had to ration their life-saving insulin, and some have died.
Documents obtained by the committee show that several of the companies targeted Medicare specifically to boost revenues. An internal Novo Nordisk slide deck from October 2013 emphasized, “Part D is the most profitable market for the Novo Nordisk insulin portfolio,” and noted that insulin volume for the Part D market was growing three times faster than the commercial market. A 2016 presentation prepared for Novartis by an outside consultant emphasized, “Medicare is critical to brand success, CMS spent ~$1 billion on Gleevec in 2014.” Building off the work of three hearings with pharmaceutical executives from seven companies, as well as other previous reports, this final report includes new findings from an investigation into Pfizer’s marketing of its blockbuster pain drug Lyrica, and a deeper dive into the insulin products from Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk, and Sanofi, which collectively control about 90% of the global insulin market.
“Over the past 20 years, they have repeatedly and dramatically raised the list
prices of their rapid-acting and long-acting insulins and reaped billions of
