The Senate's Special Committee on Aging launched its investigation into the rising prices of old drugs during a hearing Wednesday, according to The Washington Post.
The Senate's investigation comes at the heels of the news this September that Martin Shkreli, Turing Pharmaceutical's new 32-year-old CEO, raised the price of a 62-year-old toxoplasmosis drug by 5,000 percent overnight. While Turing said it would offer hospitals a discount on the drug called Daraprim, Mr. Shkreli said at the Forbes Healthcare Summit last week if he could rewind the past few months, he would choose to raise the price of Daraprim even higher.
In their testimony to the committee before the hearing, healthcare specialists offered a slew of ideas for containing the prices of prescription drugs, including expediting applications for generic drugs to compete with expensive brand names, improved transparency into what drugs really cost. Despite their proposed policy solutions, one underlying and persistent problem rose to the forefront: Physicians, companies that manage prescription drug benefits, hospitals and healthcare policy experts alike feel relatively powerless to control high drug prices.
"We have to figure out a way to either have more competition, or to control the prices where there is no competition," said Gerard Anderson, PhD, director of the Center for Hospital Finance and Management at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, according to the report.
Mr. Shkreli has stayed in the headlines after hiking the price for Daraprim. His comments and actions — such as his decision to shell out $2 million for the only copy of Wu Tang Clan's "Once Upon a Time in Shaolin" — have garnered increased public outrage over the out-of-control costs of life-saving prescription drugs and additionally dubbed him the "most hated man in America," according to The Hill.
Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), who co-led the Senate's first hearing on drug pricing this year, said Mr. Shkreli's decision to raise the price of Daraprim from $13.50 to $750 "shocks the conscience."
"My biggest challenge today is not to lose my temper," she said at Wednesday's hearing, according to The Hill. "The facts underlying this hearing are so egregious but it's hard not to get emotional about it."
However, pharmaceutical companies have defended themselves against allegations of price gouging.
"No one wants to say it, no one's proud of it, but this is a capitalist society, a capitalist system, capitalist rules, and my investors expect me to maximize profits not to minimize them or go to half, but to 100 percent of the profit curve," Mr. Shkreli said at the Forbes summit, according to The Washington Post.
During the hearing Wednesday, Sen. McCaskill and Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said diminished competition has created a broken system that enables some older drugs to soar in price, and the government should intervene.
"When competition breaks down — where there is a 'market failure,' as may be the case here — the disciple that keeps prices in check and protects consumers can disappear," Sen. Collins said, according to The Washington Post.