President Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services told senators Wednesday he would fight drug makers that try to block competition from generic companies, but took heat from Democrats for raising drug prices for insulin while he was a pharma CEO.
Alex Azar was before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, which members of the committee used to remind Azar of his tenure as CEO of Eli Lilly’s U.S. division, during which that company raised the price of insulin.
Azar served as the head of Eli Lilly’s U.S. division from 2012 to 2017. During that time, the price of the Eli Lilly-made insulin drug Humalog rose from $122 for a vial in 2013 to $274 in 2017, according to the Indianapolis newspaper The Republic.
Eli Lilly is part of a lawsuit filed earlier this year that charges the Indianapolis company of collusion with two other drugmakers to raise the price of insulin. Some senators called out Azar for that history during his hearing.
“As a pharmaceutical executive, you raised drug prices year after year,” said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., the ranking member of the committee.
Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., said that drugmakers have a major role in pricing since they set the list price for the product.
Azar responded that he favors insurance to ensure access to help pay for medications, but Baldwin said he was dodging the issue.
“You pushed the blame on everybody else but pharmaceutical companies that set list prices,” she said.
Azar, who served as deputy director of HHS during the George W. Bush administration, criticized the way companies game the system, but had little defense for charges that he used it himself.
“The system has the effects. That’s the problem,” he said.
Insulin has been around since the 1920s, but no generic and cheaper version of the drug exists. The reason is a practice called evergreening, which allows a drug maker to extend the life of a patent by making slight modifications to the product.
The extension of the patent means the brand name drug maker can keep its monopoly, which prevents a cheaper generic version from competing with it.
Eli Lilly is one of three brand-name drug makers that have a patent on insulin, and critics say that all three have used evergreening to extend the life of their monopolies on insulin. The three drugmakers, which besides Eli Lilly are Novo Nordisk and Sanofi, face a federal lawsuit that they also colluded to keep prices high for insulin.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., also called for a federal investigation into whether the drugmakers violated antitrust laws.
