In an era of sky-high drug price increases, doxycycline was a top-ten performer.
A version of that generic drug is now at the center of an antitrust lawsuit filed by 20 U.S. state attorneys general. It alleges that six generic drug manufacturers fixed prices for doxycycline hyclate and split the market for glyburide, an aging diabetes drug.
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Filed in a Connecticut court, the civil lawsuit is likely just the beginning. A much broader investigation is reportedly underway at the federal and congressional level, scrutinizing the cause of recent price hikes in age-old generics.
The current lawsuit includes some familiar names, that have been condemned in the court of public opinion before. They include Mylan and Teva Pharmaceuticals, alongside Heritage Pharmaceuticals and the lesser-known Mayne Pharma, Aurobindo Pharma, and Citron Pharma.
Mylan has been under siege for the latter part of the year due to its price gouging tactics. The controversy involves the EpiPen, a life-saving drug for people with severe allergies. Mylan acquired the product in 2007 and then increased the price by 460% over 8 years, to more than $600 for a two-pack.
It is the relatively small generics company Heritage, however, that’s at the center of the current case. Bloomberg reported on Wednesday that its former CEO Jeffrey Glazer and former president Jason Malek (both fired from the company in August) have now been charged for fixing drug prices and splitting the market with a competitor.
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Many other companies have apparently taken a legal path to generic price hikes.
Arcadia Healthcare Solutions’ drug price calculator reveals some major jumps in the cost of basic prescription medicines over the past five years. It taps into data used by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) as part of the Medicaid Drug Rebate Program — though the company underscores the exact numbers are difficult to track.
For commonly prescribed drugs, it found many had doubled or tripled in price. One drug, pyridoxine (vitamin B6) increased over 500 percent from 2011 to 2015.
Source: Arcadia Healthcare Solutions
Heritage is charged with price-fixing for a slow-release version of doxycycline hyclate, which features more broadly in the drug price database as doxycycline. Amidst these numbers, an increase in costs caused by price-fixing would easily get lost.
In 2011, doxycycline cost around $13 per script. Five years later, the price had jumped to $54. That’s a 315% increase for a drug brought to the market by Pfizer in 1967.
Arcadia found the number of scripts written for doxycycline halved between 2011 and 2015. Yet the total money paid for the drug doubled from just over $19 million to nearly $40 million.
It’s unlikely that all 10 drugs on the ‘Biggest Price Movers’ list are the product of market manipulation. When companies have a monopoly, as Mylan did, they can charge what they like. As a result, criminal charges are only part of the solution as the government tries desperately to moderate healthcare costs.
Photo: Hailshadow/Getty Images
