Turing Pharmaceuticals, the company that made headlines after jacking up the price of Daraprim, an antiparasitic drug, announced it would lower the drug's list price for hospitals "up to 50%" in a sent Tuesday.
Turing also said it would offer smaller bottles, to make the drug easier for hospitals to stock, and free samples to physicians, so that the drug could be available in emergency situations.
"Physicians, patients, hospitals, and patient advocacy groups have told us time and time again that we need to keep patients' out-of-pocket costs low, have patient assistance programs in place, and ensure hospitals can afford to stock Daraprim for treatment of the most vulnerable patients," said , Chief Commercial Officer for Turing in the press release.
"By providing affordable access for hospitals and reaffirming our commitment that nearly all patients will receive Daraprim for $10 or less out-of-pocket per prescription, that's what we have done," she added.
Daraprim is an antiparasitic used to treat toxoplasmosis, an infection especially prevalent among HIV patients who are immunosuppressed.
When Turing bought the rights to Daraprim in August and it triggered a social media backlash, with , Turing's CEO, a former hedge fund manager, dubbing himself "the most hated man on the internet." After the New York Times published an expose on the price hike, a tweet from former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton about her plans to stop "price gouging" shot the Nasdaq Biotechnology index down 4.7%, according to .
In response to Turing's announcement, , director of public policy for the University of Southern California's Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics, in Los Angeles, told 鶹ý, "I don't think this price cut is going to alter anything, because the increase is still enormous."
He noted that the tremendous public criticism of Turing was likely to spark significant federal policy-making that could constrain the pricing of generic drugs.
"I think the CEO of Turing has really accomplished something, just not what he had in mind," Ginsburg added.
executive director of the Campaign for Sustainable Rx Pricing, a project of the National Coalition on Healthcare, pointed out in a press statement that lowering Daraprim's price by 50% would reduce the cost to $375, which is still a 2,500% increase over the original price of $13.50.
"This same medication can be purchased overseas for $.66 a pill -- a fraction of what it costs in the U.S. -- which makes us question how the pharmaceutical industry can justify their outrageous and harmful pricing strategies," he added.
, a pharmacist and PhD student in Health Services Research at the University of Pittsburgh, said the reason Turing raised the price of Daraprim was because it had no generic competitors. "This is because Daraprim is a very rarely used drug and therefore, it would not be profitable for generic companies to file a FDA application for pyrimethamine [the drug's generic name]."
assistant professor of health policy and economics at the University of Chicago Medical Center, said lowering the barriers for entry to these markets for generic companies would increase competition. "We may have to provide certain types of incentives to pull manufacturers into this market," she noted.
Conti was also skeptical of the price drop. "Let's make absolutely sure that they're actually dropping their list price and not just using that as shorthand for providing more expanded discounts."
Dropping a list price would require re-negotiating the initial contract with every purchaser in the world, she said. "That's a very large concession to public pressure and public outcry on price gouging."
A more likely scenario, Conti explained, is that Turing is offering substantial discounts to certain types of payers -- including commercial payers, Medicare, and Medicaid -- that would probably already be getting the drug at a discount.
president of Simon & Co., here, told 鶹ý in an email the impact of the price drop would depend on the price that nonsafety net hospitals -- those that don't qualify for 340B drug programs -- can negotiate.
"Without generic competition, there is only public opinion as an incentive for the manufacturer to negotiate," she said. And since "volume drives price," rural hospitals will have the least bargaining power.
Simons said Congress needs to revise the 340B drug discount program to make sure that the initial cost of such drugs are affordable.