The auto-inject version of the drug that used to cost $575 for two doses now costs $3,750. The generic, Naloxone, isn’t much better: pre-crisis, the drug cost $1.84 per dose. Now, the drug costs 17 times that.
Source/Credit: The Daily Beast
By Ben Collins | May 30, 2016
In the face of America’s opiate epidemic, Big Pharma is jacking up the price of the life-saving drug Narcan. One attorney general is standing in their way.
Over 28,600 people died due to opioid overdoses nationwide in 2014, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data that was released this month. That’s quadruple the number of opioid deaths from the year 2000.
There is an antidote. It’s called Narcan, a drug that blocks the effects of drugs like heroin immediately after an overdose. It’s saved countless lives in states like New Hampshire, where opioid overdoses are up 73.5 percent year over year, and 2,800 doses were administered in the state from January to August alone.
The makers of the drug know this, and they are starting to make victims—and states—pay.
The auto-inject version of the drug that used to cost $575 for two doses now costs $3,750, according to Politico. The generic, Naloxone, isn’t much better: pre-crisis, the drug cost $1.84 per dose. Now, the drug costs 17 times that.
The FDA can’t do anything about it. It officially has “no legal authority to investigate or control the prices charged for marketed drugs,” which is why it couldn’t penalize noted, proud price gouger Martin Shkreli for a vital drug that treats toxoplasmosis.
But there is a way to stop price gouging on a drug that now saves thousands of lives a year during America’s burgeoning opiate epidemic: Demand answers from the drug companies, threaten to sue the hell out of them, and force them to pay for it.
That’s what Attorney General Maura Healey did in Massachusetts. After hearing countless complaints from first responders about the sudden surge in the price of the drug, she started investigating companies like California-based Amphastar Pharmaceuticals in April.
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Read original post here: Big Pharma: Heroin Overdose Antidote Now Costs Double
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