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May 7, 2019

QU panel probes drug pricing

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By Natalie Missakian

A recent surge in new treatments for cancer and other diseases has brought hope to patients suffering from conditions once considered a death sentence.

But with a yearly price tag often topping the six-figure mark, many patients cannot afford the life-saving therapies.

So how can policymakers and the pharmaceutical industry keep drug prices in check without squelching the innovation that brought the drugs to market in the first place?

A panel of experts tackled that thorny question Monday during a panel discussion entitled “The Price of Innovation: A Discussion on Drug Pricing in the Pharmaceutical Industry,” held at Quinnipiac University’s Center for Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences.

“If we change the system, we don’t want to lose the innovation we have had over the last 20 years because people are benefiting,” said panelist Clement Lewin, vice president of research and development strategy at vaccine-maker Sanofi Pasteur Pharmaceuticals.

Other panelists included Joseph Ross, MD, associate professor of medicine and public health at Yale School of Medicine, and Ellen Andrews, executive director of the Connecticut Health Policy Project, which advocates for consumers.

Naveen Kumar Reddy, a fourth-year student at QU’s Frank H. Netter MD School of Medicine, said he organized the panel because he found too much of the debate focused on either demonizing the pharmaceutical industry or the federal government. “Very rarely did I find solutions that sought to unite the health care system,” he said.

While researching groundbreaking immunotherapy treatments at City of Hope Cancer Center in California, he said he was torn between his love for the science and his realization that the new drugs he was helping to create would be unaffordable for many patients.

His concerns deepened during his first years of medical school, when he went to work for an oncology practice.

“I saw patients struggling from financial toxicity and dying from their disease due to a lack of ability to pay for their therapies,” he said.

He contrasted the skyrocketing cost of drugs in the United States with prices in the United Kingdom. He said the biologic Humira, which treats rheumatoid arthritis, costs $67,000 a year in the U.S. but only $12,000 a year in the UK.

Reddy and panelists noted that the UK’s government-run health care system has the power to bargain with drug companies, something Medicare is not permitted to do in the U.S. It also has stricter patent laws that allow more competition from cheaper generics.

Lewin said in terms of innovation, “The U.S. in some ways is subsidizing everybody else” since the higher prices fetched by the new drugs in the domestic market have fueled private-sector R&D investment. Those investments have helped bring new vaccines and life-saving treatments for rare diseases and cancer to market.

“Venture capitalists invest because they expect a return,” he said.

If the drugs aren’t priced high enough to make money “people will go and invest in Uber or something else.”

I’m not saying it’s right,” he added. “It’s just that we have to work with the system [we have].”

With the cost of bringing a new drug to market ranging from $800 million to $2 billion, depending on who is doing the estimating, drug companies often justify the high price of new treatments as a way to offset the high cost of R&D.

But Andrews doesn’t accept that argument.

“When I go to buy my iPhone, I really don’t care how much Apple spent developing it,” she said.

“There has to be something different than, ‘This is what we spent on R&D. Too bad. You just have to suck it up and it’s going to cost $276,000 for your [cystic fibrosis] medication.’”

Contact Natalie Missakian at news@newhavenbiz.com

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