Quote of the Decade: Drug Prices are as High as the Market WIll Bear

“Although prices are often justified by the high cost of drug development, there is no evidence of an association between research and development costs and prices; rather, prescription drugs are priced in the United States primarily on the basis of what the market will bear.”

From the abstract of the 2016 study in the JAMA, “The High Cost of Prescription Drugs in the United States”

The NYT article referencing this study uses Humira as an example of this phenomenon:

“The price of Humira, an anti-inflammatory drug dispensed in an injectable pen, has risen from about $19,000 a year in 2012, to more than $38,000 today, per patient, after rebates, according to SSR Health, a research firm. That’s an increase of 100 percent… A prefilled carton with two syringes costs $2,669 in the United States, compared with $1,362 in Britain, $822 in Switzerland and $552 in South Africa, according to a 2015 report from the International Federation of Health Plans.”

(photo courtesy of pixabay.com)