Coronavirus: Big Pharma wages stealth war on drug price watchdog
Big Pharma is using stealth tactics to undermine credibility of non-profit that holds down US drug prices.
As evidence grew this spring that the drug remdesivir was helping COVID-19 patients, some Wall Street investors bet on analysts' estimates that its maker, Gilead Sciences Inc, could charge up to $10,000 for the treatment.
Then a small but increasingly influential drug-pricing research organisation, the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER), said the treatment only justified a price between $2,800 and $5,000. Shortly after, Gilead announced it would charge about $3,100 for a five-day treatment and $5,700 for 10 days - in line with the ICER recommendation.
The episode illustrates the growing power of the Boston-based nonprofit to hold down US drug prices. Over the past five years, ICER has pressured drugmakers to lower the cost of nearly 100 drugs. It aims to play a similar role with emerging COVID-19 treatments and vaccines. Health insurers increasingly use ICER's fair-value analyses to limit access to expensive drugs or to negotiate steeper discounts with drugmakers.
The industry has moved aggressively to combat the threat to its profits in two ways: With open criticism of ICER's formula and with a stealthier campaign to undermine its credibility through proxies, including veterans' groups and organisations that claim to advocate for patients but have ties to the pharmaceutical industry, Reuters news agency found in a review of industry connections and funding among groups targeting ICER.
...Steven Pearson, founder and president of ICER said the coronavirus pandemic has raised the importance of the organisation's work as the pricing of vaccines and treatments will impact millions of Americans amid a faltering economy.
"There is a heightened public awareness and sensitivity to the risk of high prices being unfair," he said.
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