Pharma CEOs on price hiking: “We can do anything we want”

Following Turing Pharmaceuticals’ famous 5,000% price hike on critical drug Daraprim, Canadian pharma group Valeant has followed up with a similarly incredulous move

Since acquiring Salix, the group has hiked heartburn pill Zegerid’s price by almost 550%.

There’s a one-track mentality which is driving the current culture of pricing drugs to take them out of reach to most patients.

It’s called shareholder culture. Now, pharma CEOs rarely come off well in media interviews, and Valeant’s CEO, J. Michael Pearson is no exception.

Talking to CNBC last year, he showed his defiant side.  “My primary responsibility is to Valeant shareholders. We can do anything we want to do. We will continue to make acquisitions, we will continue to move forward”.

Reported in U.S. Uncut, Pearson also said recently “If products are sort of mispriced and there’s an opportunity, we will act appropriately in terms of doing what I assume our shareholders would like us to do.”

This business model, as illustrated by Turing’s Martin Shkreli (a very unpopular young man in the US press) is coming under real scrutiny now. Described by many as unsustainable, there certainly appear to be few winners when prices jump disproportionately. Forcing drugs out of the reach of the masses will ultimately force them out of the market. That’s economics folks.