The price of drug prescribed to infants in Canada with a rare and potentially dangerous form of epilepsy has jumped by 2,000 per cent practically overnight. Infantile spasms, also called West syndrome, is a catastrophic and rare form of epilepsy. It's diagnosed in babies that encounter frequent and intermittent seizures. Half of the patients don't respond to initial treatment protocol, so doctors then turn to Synacthen Depot, a long-acting form of the drug that is injected into muscle.
"The drug is long off patent" Dr. Carter Snead, a neurologist, said"and it works 90 per cent of the time"."The price of Synacthen Depot increased by more than 2,000 per cent from $33.05 per vial to $680 per vial," said Carolyn Ziegler, a spokeswoman for Alberta Health. When asked about the sudden increase in price, Mallinckrodt, a global pharmaceutical company, responded by saying that it was told by the existing suppliers of the drug that they would cease production in early 2016. When Mallinckrodt acquired Questcor in 2014, Synacthen Depot was one of the products in the portfolio. It was losing money then and still is.
This case closely resembles Turing Pharmecuticals', along with a myriad of other pharmaceutical companies' decisions to drastically increase the price of a medication. In this case, the company increased the price of the drug because it was losing money at its original price. Although we don't know the exact price at which it would equal the marginal cost of producing the good, it could reasonably be said that the increase is equal to or greater than the cost, and therefore would not incur a loss at the price of $680. I think having the option of getting the medication at a higher price is better than the company electing to discontinue the product entirely because it is losing them money.
https://ca.news.yahoo.com/2-000-price-hike-infant-100000468.html
5 comments:
It seems that this has been a reoccurring theme throughout this year with other pharmaceutical companies hiking up prices in order to turn a profit. Given the severity of this price influx, I wouldn't be surprised if the government steps in to help supplement families who need this medication. In addition to this, I could see a health care reform in terms of medication happen in the near future.
It seems to be true that pharmaceutical companies as of lately have been having issues with being forced to hike up their prices to unaffordable standards. From the perspective of the company, they are posed with few options of shutting down (and eliminating the drug from production) or steeping the price to a ridiculous cost. Even so with the price at 2,000% higher, the majority of families will not be able to pay for it and the company won't have as high of a demand. I definitely think that government intervention is necessary in order to sustain the health of this target group of infants. This way, both the company and the patients will receive what they need in order to survive.
I think how the system is set up now, that this will continue to be a problem. When a new drug is developed the company has coverage of their new drug for the life of the patent that they receive. However, after that time companies are allowed to develop generics of the product that can be sold at much lower prices with the same outcomes. The downside to this however is that research and development for these companies costs an immense amount of money that often these companies have a hard time being funded for especially for more critical cases such as the one in this article. The other issue that brings about these high prices is that often times once a certain drug has lost its patent a new facet to this drug is found. So it may first go on the market to treat high blood pressure, but then after its patent is over it will go back on the market with a different name treating a different disease, even though it is the same pill. Because of these factors it has essentially created an oligopolistic market and one that will be hard to control without some governmental influence.
If this continues, I think legislation has to step in. While I am all for people striving to make as much profit as they can, it shouldn't be at the expense of a patient needing proper medicine. Why would you want to sell something at a price a lot of people couldn't afford. It's like you haven't taken Economics 110. More people would buy the medicine at a cheaper price.
I would like to call such action as an robbery to normal families. It is such a pity for new parents to lose their innocent babies who can not afford this medication. It is inhuman for enterprises to make profit in this way.
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