High-cost specialty drugs continue to rise, far outpacing inflation and wage growth and increasing healthcare costs, according to a new report.
These high prices can make these life-saving treatments inaccessible to those that can’t afford them, according to a white paper released Monday form the Campaign for Sustainable Rx Pricing, a part of the pro-health care reform group called the National Coalition on Health Care.
The coalition is comprised of many high-profile lobbying groups such as the AARP and the American Heart Association — as well as an odd collection of special interests ranging from the Organization of Chinese Americans to the Motion Picture Association of America.
Specialty drugs are those that either treat or cure a very serious, hard-to-treat disease. The often-tiny markets for these medicines create a strong disincentive for pharmaceutical companies to spend the enormous amounts of time and effort necessary to invent and make them. While demand for specialty products to treat serious illnesses can be high, it is intensively concentrated. As a result, specialty drugs tend to be very expensive.
Nevertheless, the health care coalition criticizes new products such as Gilead’s Hepatitis C cure Sovaldi over their high prices, which in Sovaldi’s case is $84,000 for an entire treatment regimen against the life-threatening disease.
The coalition charges that those prices do not come down with the passage of time — as is the case with many medications, which tend to deflate in price as up-front development costs are amortized, patents expire, and production becomes more efficient.
The paper found annual price increases for specialty drugs raced past increases in inflation and wage growth.
Take the arthritis drug Enbrel, which increased in price by 17 percent in 2014 compared to the year before. The drug’s competitor Humira also increased more than 17 percent, the paper said.
All told, specialty drugs for inflammatory conditions rose 15 percent in price in 2014 compared to 2013.
“This situation is particularly devastating for the large population of people with chronic conditions, such as multiple sclerosis, HIV and cancer, since they rely on specialty drugs that are life-long maintenance treatments,” the campaign said.
The industry trade group Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America did not immediately return a request for comment.
Unlike some European countries, federal health care programs such as Medicare and Medicaid don’t negotiate with drug makers to lower prices. President Obama added such negotiating power in his recent budget, but the measure hasn’t gone anywhere.
