Congressional Democrats aiming to reduce drug prices are targeting 130 patents, including some from the pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk related to the expensive drug Ozempic.
The effort comes several months after the FTC and a group of senators, led by Sen. Bernie Sanders , similarly pressured pharmaceutical companies to take down patents on their asthma inhalers and other products. Three of those companies pledged to cut out-of-pocket costs for millions of Americans who rely on the companies’ devices to help them breathe.
The pharmaceutical industry has dismissed Democrats’ challenges as political grandstanding, warning that a patent crackdown could scare investors and companies away from developing medicines, and urging them to pick new targets.“This is yet another example of policymakers failing to address the real challenges impacting patients,” Cat Hill, a spokeswoman for industry trade group PhRMA, said in a statement.
Novo Nordisk and Sanders have been locked in a fight that has made front-page news in Denmark, where the nation’s economy has been boosted by the Danish pharmaceutical company’s sales of Ozempic, which is often prescribed off-label for weight loss, and weight-loss drug Wegovy. Sanders has launched an investigation into the company, using the same tactics that helped win inhaler price cuts, and warned that if Novo Nordisk does not curb prices on its weight-loss drugs, the U.S.
The Biden administration and its allies in Congress celebrated a breakthrough in 2022, with passage of the Inflation Reduction Act. The law includes provisions to cap older Americans’ out-of-pocket spending on drugs, and to use the power of the federal government to negotiate directly with drug companies. But many of the law’s most sweeping ambitions will not take full effect for several years.
Sanders, who chairs the Senate health panel, also announced an investigation in January into why U.S. inhaler prices were hundreds of dollars higher than their cost abroad, threatening to haul executives in for hearings. Within 75 days, AstraZeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim and GlaxoSmithKline had voluntarily pledged to cap the out-of-pocket cost of their inhalers at $35 a month. The caps began taking effect June 1 - a victory that Democrats can tout in an election year.
The drug industry’s use of the Orange Book had raised questions inside the FTC for years, current and former agency officials said, pointing to a 2002 study of the issue. But the officials said the agency did not consider filing challenges to questionable patents until Khan issued a call for new approaches to crack down on anti-competitive behavior and one staffer in the policy-planning office proposed the Orange Book strategy.
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