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 Representative Elijah Cummings, who chairs the House Oversight
Committee, sent letters to 12 drugmakers seeking information on
price increases, investment in research and development, and
corporate strategies to preserve market share and pricing power, his
office said in a statement.
AbbVie Inc, Amgen Inc, AstraZeneca PLC, Celgene Corp, Eli Lilly and
Co, Johnson & Johnson, Mallinckrodt PLC, Novartis AG, Novo Nordisk,
Pfizer Inc, Sanofi and Teva Pharmaceutical all received letters
seeking information about their pricing practices.
Novo Nordisk, Amgen, Celgene, and Novartis said they were reviewing
the request. The other drug companies did not immediately respond to
requests for comment.
Cummings' letters focused on drugs that are the costliest to
Medicare Part D, a program that helps beneficiaries of the federal
health insurance program for the elderly and disabled pay for
self-administered medicines like those purchased at drugstores, as
well as drugs that have had the largest price increases over a
five-year period.
They include AbbVie's Humira, the world's top-selling medicine that
had a price increase at the start of the year, Johnson & Johnson's
blockbuster cancer drug Imbruvica and several diabetes medications.
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President Donald Trump made high prescription drug prices a top
issue in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign and said that drug
companies were "getting away with murder." The U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services (HHS) last year rolled out a plan to lower
drug prices and has introduced several modest proposals to curb
medicine costs, but Democrats have said Trump and his administration
are not doing enough.
Several pharmaceutical companies temporarily froze prices on select
drugs last year after being criticized by Trump on Twitter. But
drugmakers raised prices on more than 250 prescription drugs to
begin 2019.
Cummings, along with U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent who
caucuses with Democrats, introduced three bills last week aimed at
lowering drug prices.
That legislation would peg U.S. prescription drug prices to the
median price from five countries - Canada, Britain, France, Germany
and Japan - where drug costs are typically far lower because of
government price controls. It would also allow Americans to import
medication from Canada and other countries, as well as allow the HHS
secretary to negotiate prices in Medicare Part D.
(Reporting by Yasmeen Abutaleb, Editing by Rosalba O'Brien)
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