For Shame: Congress Accuses Novartis, Amgen and Mallinckrodt of Price-Gouging

October 2, 2020

Amgen, Mallinckrodt, and Novartis are now in the same boat as Celgene and Teva. A congressional probe released several reports concluding the drugmakers relied on regular price increases to meet their sales targets and quash competition so they could retain monopoly pricing. The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform reviewed 400,000 pages of internal documents from Amgen, 140,000 pages from Mallinckrodt and 100,000 pages from Novartis to inform the reports.

Lawmakers concluded that Amgen’s pricing decisions “were driven primarily by the need to meet increasingly aggressive revenue targets,” the House Committee on Oversight and Reform wrote in a 41-page report detailing actions on its immunology drug Enbrel and thyroid med Sensipar. For Mallinckrodt, executives raised prices on H.P. Acthar Gel “as high as possible” to meet financial goals, the committee wrote in a 50-page report. And Novartis, marketing the lucrative cancer med Gleevec, raised prices aggressively while seeking to maintain “public pushback,” a 46-page report found. Read more here.

 

(Source: Fierce Pharma, Eric Sagonowsky Oct 1, 2020)

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