Pharmaceutical industry CEOs face Senate hearing on prices
In Washington, drug pricing may be one of the few issues that President Trump and the Democrats could find common ground.
The chief executives from some of the biggest pharmaceutical companies will be on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, where they will be questioned about drug prices.
The executives will represent companies with some of the highest-grossing drugs in the world, and have routinely raised prices on many of their products.
Among the executives expected the CEOs from Bristol-Myers Squibb, Merck, Pfizer, AbbVie, Astra Zenenca and Sanofi.
Johnson & Johnson will be represented by an executive who oversees its drug division.
Members of the Senate Finance Committee, chaired by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa), are expected to question the executives on their pricing practices and how the companies can reduce costs for patients, according to people familiar with the matter. They are also likely to face questions about their strategies to fight off cheaper generic alternatives, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Americans continue to deal with the rising cost of health care, including out-of-pocket costs for prescription drugs.
AbbVie’s rheumatoid arthritis treatment Humira is the top-selling drug in the world, and the company said that both volume and pricing fueled the drug’s growth during the fourth quarter. AbbVie raised the drug’s list price by 9.7% in January 2018 and then 6.2% more last month.
AbbVie has pledged to limit its overall drug-price increases to less than 10% annually, and only once a year, which the company says would be offset by rebates and discounts paid to insurers and other industry middlemen.
New York-based Pfizer, which had regularly increased prices over the years, temporarily put off raising prices last year amid pressure from President Trump, but resumed increases on about 10% of its portfolio this year.
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Chief Executive Albert Bourla, who began leading the company in January, said on its fourth-quarter earnings call that Pfizer’s growth won’t be driven by price,
The hearing comes as the Trump administration pursues its own proposals aimed at drug prices. One, opposed by the industry, would tie the price of some Medicare drugs to prices in foreign countries where drugs are cheaper. However, the drug industry has supported the administration’s proposal limiting the rebates that drug companies pay to middlemen in federal pharmacy programs.