Heard on All Things Considered – Drugmakers raised the list prices on 575 name-brand drugs in just the first two days of the new year, according to drug price research firm 46brooklyn.
Drugs for diabetes, HIV, cancer saw price hikes, among others.
For years a 10% annual price hike was fairly normal, but they’ve started coming down in recent years. This year’s median price hike so far is only 4%, says Antonio Ciaccia, CEO of 46brooklyn.
“While it’s early, if that number held throughout the year, that would make it the lowest median price increase in over a decade,” says Ciaccia.
January is typically a popular time to raise prices on brand name drugs, but companies can raise them throughout the year. There could even be more later this month, he says.
He provided data on the hikes to NPR, and explained that every row of the spreadsheet has its own story about how different layers of the health care system, government regulations and drug market interact.
“The list prices for drugs create great signals for what might be happening in the marketplace and what incentives might be driving certain behaviors, not just by drug companies, but every layer of the drug supply chain,” says Ciaccia.
The list prices are the starting point, kind of like the sticker price for a new car. There are discounts and different kinds of rebates that affect what actually gets paid, similar to carmaker incentives. Here are takeaways from this year’s price changes.
Some big names went up
Type 2 diabetes drug Ozempic and COVID drug Paxlovid saw price hikes of about 3% each, according to 46brooklyn, which uses Elsevier wholesale acquisition cost data in its analysis.
NPR reached out to the drugs’ makers to ask them why they raised these prices. Neither detailed the specifics behind those price increases, but they spoke about increases across their products generally …
