BLOG: New Year non-surprise price increases

ByDarrell E. White, MD

Happy New Year to all of you out there in Dry Eye Disease Land! Anybody notice the association between champagne consumption and DED? In a very small study done in the greater Cleveland area, it was shown that there is a direct correlation between the number of glasses of champagne consumed on December 31 and an OSDI taken on January 1.

Real science from your humble dry eye scribe.

With the turning of the calendar from 2018 to 2019 comes the inevitable announcements of pharmaceutical price increases. Yup, even in this age of big pharma companies sitting in the crosshairs of every politician in the country, pretty much every company is raising prices on their medicines. Some of the generic med price increases are mind-blowing. This includes the so-called “virtuous” companies that have pledged to restrain growth in the cost of medicines by refraining from increases over 10%. Welcome to the era of annual 9.5% price increases because, you know, 10% per year would be immoral. That 0.5% sacrifice is the new noble.

At least you could see that coming. Remember my series on why drug prices keep going up? None of these highly publicized efforts of self-restraint change the essential fact that pharmacy benefit managers still demand a higher price, creating a bigger kickback, er, rebate. Still, the prize for chutzpah in my mind goes not to those who burnish their pyrite halos but to companies that take us for fools when they tell us why they are raising prices. This year’s winner is Pfizer, which is raising prices on most medicines by 5%. However, it has announced a price rise in one particular medicine of 9% because it has been approved for new uses.

Think about that for a moment. Pfizer will sell more of this unnamed drug because it is now approved for a wider list of indications, thereby making more money. Not content with this windfall, it will also raise the price of this older medicine, thereby making more money. That’s kinda like a company that makes a dry eye drug (huge market) getting approval for, I dunno, postop pain (huge market) and using that as the excuse to raise its price. Presumably we are supposed to feel OK about this double dip because the company showed its concern for rising drug prices by limiting the increase to less than 10%.

In the spirit of this new era of service to the greater good, our Cleveland study group will be repeating our New Year’s study to also validate the use of SANDE, SPEED and the Dry Eye Symptom scale. In our original study, the subjects drank vintage French champagne. This time, we will seek solidarity with the sacrifices of our pharma brethren by consuming non-vintage California sparkling wine in order to reduce the high costs associated with R&D.

Now, where did I put that halo ...

Disclosure: White reports he is a consultant to Allergan, Shire, Sun, Kala, Ocular Science, Rendia, TearLab, Eyevance and Omeros; is a speaker for Shire, Allergan, Omeros and Sun; and has an ownership interest in Ocular Science and Eyevance.