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Lobbyists for insurers, big pharma trade barbs over high drug costs



Right now it’s a battle between lobbyists but soon it could turn into a full-scale war between insurers and drug makers. Karen Ignagni, chief executive of America’s Health Insurance Plans

Karen Ignagni, chief executive of the trade group America’s Health Insurance Plans, has taken to the airwaves and other media to castigate drug makers’ pricing. In a recent appearance on a CNN segment, Ignagni criticizes pharmaceutical companies for charging up to six figures for specialty drugs.

“When you look at the six-figure prices of specialty drugs, you come away with the conclusion that the pricing is anything that pharmaceutical companies and manufacturers can get away with,” Ignagni says on the segment.

That’s just the latest salvo she’s thrown at the drug makers. Earlier this month, Ignagni said in a forum that drug makers were looking for a “blank check” when it came to drug pricing.

“We all want the access to the best therapies that will work for us — without a doubt — but to sustain innovation we have to have sustainable pricing,” she said.

Her comments come amid widespread criticism over Gilead Sciences Inc.’s  /quotes/zigman/72849/delayed /quotes/nls/gild GILD $1,000-a-day treatment for hepatitis C, Sovaldi. The treatment has proven highly effective, but Gilead has priced the three-month program at $84,000, drawing the ire of insurers and others in the medical community.

The drug industry’s main lobbyist, PhRMA, has been fighting back. The group sent out an email noting how small the slice of the health-care dollar is devoted to prescription drugs — roughly 9 cents. Further, drug spending has grown 3.3% a year during the past five years, slower than other health-care segments.

PhRMA Chief Executive John Castellani also released his own missive on drug pricing, saying that developing new drugs can cost billions for the companies involved. Further, they can save billions more.

“Curing Hepatitis C not only dramatically improves patients’ lives, but has the potential to save the U.S. health care system as much as $9 billion per year by preventing expensive hospitalizations and avoiding thousands of liver transplants that routinely cost over $500,000 each,” Castellani said.


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