This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.
Allergan CEO commits to responsible drug pricing ideals
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
Allergan CEO and President Brent Saunders believes in a “social contract” that balances the cost of developing new medications with affordability.
In a blog post on the Allergan website, Saunders noted that companies that aggressively raise prices on medications or needed items have “violated this social contract.”
“We will not engage in price gouging actions or predatory pricing,” Saunders wrote as a commitment to responsible pricing ideals of the social contract.
Saunders said that Allergan is committed to working with decision makers and intermediaries to make its products accessible, with the intermediaries having “open access to formularies whenever possible.” Furthermore, Saunders said Allergan intends to enhance patient assistance programs in 2017, limit price increases to “low to mid single digits percentages per year,” and “not engage in the practice of taking major price increases without corresponding cost increases as our products near patent expiration.”
“There is no joy on my part when a company finds itself in the public spotlight – the target of societal ire,” Saunders wrote. “The public’s expectation is that we exist to heal and cure. It’s an expectation that mirrors our own,” he wrote.
For Saunders, the social contract consists of four principles: invest and innovate, meeting unmet needs through investment and innovation; access and pricing, “making branded therapeutic treatments accessible and affordable”; quality and safety, committing to “intensely” monitoring safety of Allergan’s products, before and after regulatory approval; and education, “educating physicians about our products so they can be used in the right patients for the right conditions.”
“For our industry to remain a vibrant and important part of the health care ecosystem, Allergan commits to this social contract and I encourage others to formulate their own self-policing actions. It is good for Allergan, and it is also vital for our most important constituents – the medical professionals and patients who count on us to continue finding new treatments for their most pressing medical needs,” Saunders wrote.