This old drug was free. Now its $109,500 a year.

[Cattledog]

For decades, Don Anderson of Seattle has been taking the same drug to help control the temporary bouts of immobility and muscle weakness caused by a rare and frightening genetic illness called periodic paralysis.

“It's like putting a 50-pound pack on your back and standing up at the dinner table,” Anderson, 73, said. “It's like wearing lead shoes around all the time.”

The drug Anderson has been taking all these years was originally approved in 1958 and used primarily to treat the eye disease glaucoma under the brand name Daranide, its price so unremarkable that he can't quite remember how much it cost at the pharmacy counter.

But the price has been on a roller coaster in recent years — zooming from a list price of $50 for a bottle of 100 pills in the early 2000s up to $13,650 in 2015, then plummeting back down to free, before skyrocketing back up to $15,001 after a new company, Strongbridge Biopharma, acquired the drug and relaunched it this spring.

“I'm constantly hearing that public pressure, public shaming will be sufficient to curb these bad actors in these industries. It often feels if you take your attention off of them, even for a second, they'll revert to these old ways,” said Rachel Sachs, an associate law professor at Washington University in Saint Louis. “It’s just another example of how the system has some problems that need to be fixed.”

The zigzagging trajectory of the price of Daranide, now known as Keveyis, shows just how much freedom drug companies have in pricing therapies — and what a big business opportunity selling extremely-rare-disease drugs has become. It also illustrates how well-intentioned policy to help spur the development of “orphan” drugs for very rare diseases can have unintended consequences.

Entire article at:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/12/18/this-old-drug-was-free-now-its-109500-a-year/?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stories_pillprice-355pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.1d71c3c7df35

[KT2000]

1. I'm sure they have their reasons

the free market and runaway greed - I like to call it cannibalism.

[dixiegrrrrl]

2. and the knowledge that insurance companies will pay for it,

No insurance, too bad.

[iluvtennis]

4. Yep

[PatrickforO]

3. Single payer. Single payer. Single payer.

Single payer. Single payer. Single payer.

Medicare for all Americans, with the government free to negotiate prices with providers.

[SammyWinstonJack]

5. Facing $25 billion annual cuts to Medicare, Medicare for All is not likely.

[PatrickforO]

6. Yes, but we should not be facing that, should we?

If this nation was anything near what it could be, we would have had universal health care since after the Second World War. Right now, there are about 800 people in DC that call the shots, and they are brought to heel by billions in corporate corruption. Yet, if they had any courage at all, if they weren't too afraid of losing the next election to actually govern the country, if they decided to do the right thing instead of the corrupt thing, then we would have Medicare for all Americans.

Now.