The following is an excerpt from Reuters.
After setting record-high U.S. prices in the first half of 2022, drugmakers continued to launch medicines at high prices in the second half, a Reuters analysis has found, highlighting their power despite new legislation to lower costs for older prescription products.
The median annual price of the 17 novel drugs the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved since July 2022 is $193,900, down from $257,000 in the first half of 2022, Reuters found.
For full year 2022, the median was $222,003.
Prices in the second half of 2022 for new U.S. drugs
In 2021, the median annual price was $180,000 for the 30 drugs first marketed through mid-July, according to a study published recently in JAMA.
The latest numbers imply double digit year-over-year price growth.
“I don’t see anything changing that trend,” Dr. Aaron Kesselheim, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, told Reuters.
Kesselheim, who co-authored the JAMA study, believes Congress will eventually have to address excessively high launch prices.
The findings follow a recent analysis from U.S. Democratic Representative Katie Porter which found that the annual price of a newly-launched cancer drug in the United States averaged $283,000 in 2021, a 53% increase from 2017.
Congress last year passed the landmark Inflation Reduction Act that includes a cap on annual drug price increases and allows the Medicare health program for seniors to negotiate prices for up to 20 of the drugs on which it spends the most.
The legislation, however, does not limit what drugmakers can charge for new medications.
Read full article, plus drug price lists here.
