A US. Senate committee on Wednesday launched a bipartisan investigation into pharmaceutical drug pricing, requesting documents from four drugmakers, including Valeant Pharmaceuticals and Turing Pharmaceuticals, two companies recently that are in the news for hiking the prices of once-inexpensive lifesaving drugs.
The Senate's Special Committee on Aging also requested documents from Retrophin Inc. and Rodelis Therapeutics, according to a statement from the panel's chairwoman, Rep. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Rep. Claire McCaskill of Missouri, the panel's top Democrat, reported Reuters.
"The sudden, aggressive price hikes for a variety of drugs used widely for decades affect patients and health care providers and the overall cost of health care," Collins said. "Given the potential harm to patients across our country who rely on these drugs for critical care and treatment, the Senate Special Committee on Aging considers these massive price increases worthy of a serious, bipartisan investigation into the causes, impacts, and potential solutions."
McCaskill added: "Some of the recent actions we've seen in the pharmaceutical industry-with corporate acquisitions followed by dramatic increases in the prices of pre-existing drugs-have looked like little more than price gouging. We need to get to the bottom of why we're seeing huge spikes in drug prices that seemingly have no relationship to research and development costs."
The move comes in response to public outcry about companies like Turing, which recently made headlines by obtaining the rights to the anti-infective drug Daraprim and hiking its price by 5,000 percent, from $13.50 per pill to $750. Daraprim is the only U.S.-approved treatment for toxoplasmosis, a parasitic infections, according to the Associated Press.
Valeant is already under investigation by members of Congress for its business strategy. The company has the lowest research and development costs in the industry and prefers to focus on aggressive acquisition of smaller companies in order to add new products to its line, according to Business Insider.
The Senate committee wrote a letter to Valeant's chief executive, Mike Pearson, saying that it wanted more information about its decision to increase the price of Nitropress, a drug used to treat high blood pressure. On the day Valeant acquired the medication, it increased the price by 625 percent to $1,346.62 per vial. It also increased the heart drug Isuprel by 820 percent to $36,811 for 25 pills and increased a rheumatoid arthritis drug, Cuprimine, by 2,949 percent to $26,189 for one hundred capsules, according to Reuters.
Federal prosecutors in New York and Massachusetts are already investigating drug pricing and patient assistance programs at Valeant, and the New York state attorney general's office is looking into whether Turing's price increase of Daraprim violated antitrust rules.
A national poll released last week by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that high drug prices are the top health concern among Americans.
House Democrats are scheduled to hold a news conference later Wednesday to discuss "meaningful action to combat the skyrocketing costs of pharmaceuticals."
