WSJ: Drugmakers Find Competition Doesn’t Keep a Lid on Prices

Drug price increases will likely bring more regulation in the future. In the short run that is probably not the case. The balance of power in Washington can change very quickly. 

 

Drugmakers Find Competition Doesn’t Keep a Lid on Prices

*Link may be behind the Wall Street Journal paywall. Try pasting the title in a Google Search

http://www.wsj.com/articles/drugmakers-find-competition-doesnt-keep-a-lid-on-prices-1480248003

 

“The two companies, though rivals, followed a common industry practice: raising prices almost in lockstep.”

 

““You’re not rewarded for having a low price and for the most part, the market doesn’t punish a high price,” says Mick Kolassa”

 

“The freedom to raise, rather than slash, prices in the face of competition is a big reason why U.S. prescription-drug spending has surged by close to 10% on average annually in recent years to $310 billion in 2015”

 

“Tandem drug-price increases for other ailments have prompted lawmakers to call for investigations into potential collusion.”

 

“Tandem increases can be perfectly legal, so long as companies don’t confer with each other, says Herbert Hovenkamp”

 

“In compliance training, companies tell employees not to discuss pricing with rivals. But when it comes to drugs, list prices are public.”

 

““Any profit-optimizing company is going to want to get as much price as they can get,””

 

 

 

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s