The prices of the most popular drugs in the nation have more than doubled over the last several years, but lawmakers are sticking to their probes of smaller drugs with bigger price spikes instead of taking on the biggest sellers.
The Senate Special Committee on Aging and the House Oversight Committee have investigated high drug prices, holding hearings that focus on the actions of generic drugmakers that buy drugs that have been off patent for decades and then jack up the prices.
So far, they have no plans to expand into the broader issue of price spikes of top-selling drugs.
The prices of the 10 best-selling drugs rose by at least 100 percent between 2011-14, according to an analysis by Reuters last week.
The top-selling U.S. drug, the arthritis treatment Humira, costs 125 percent more now. The second and third drugs on the list — anti-inflammatory Enbrel and multiple sclerosis drug Copaxone — rose 118 percent.
Such price increases resulted in a 44 percent boost in sales for the drugmakers, even though prescriptions for the top 10 drugs fell by 22 percent, Reuters said.
But instead of probing why those drugs’ prices rose that much, the panels have been investigating much bigger price spikes for drugs that serve much smaller patient populations.
Such cases have received a lot of attention, with an especially egregious case being Turing Pharmaceuticals. The small biotech firm, formerly led by controversial CEO Martin Shkreli, bought the rights to an anti-malarial drug called Daraprim and then raised the price by 5,000 percent to $750 a pill.
The price hike, and Shkreli’s vehement defense of it on social media, brought a lot of attention to the issue.
Earlier this year, the House Oversight Committee held a hearing with Shkreli and an executive from Valeant Pharmaceuticals, which was criticized for raising the prices of two heart drugs by 500 percent.
Shkreli resigned from Turing in December after being indicted on federal securities fraud charges related to a former business.
The Senate panel originally focused on the off-patent drugs because of the especially egregious price hikes, said Drew Pusateri, spokesman for Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri, the panel’s top Democrat.
The cases represent “the kind of price gouging that was clearly a company taking advantage of market loopholes and harming consumers,” he said.
Pusateri did note that McCaskill wouldn’t limit the areas the panel could pursue in the future.
In the House, the issue has been more contentious.
Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, has pushed his panel to conduct hearings about high prices.
The committee eventually agreed to hold a hearing, but it only focused on the problems with Valeant and Turing. Cummings has been looking into all types of drugs, including price spikes for the overdose antidote naloxone and other generic drugs that have risen in price, according to a Democratic aide.
Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, declined to comment.
Some lawmakers have tried other ways to rein in drug prices. Cummings and presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders joined 10 Democratic lawmakers pushing for the Obama administration to step in. They asked the administration to use a tool called march-in rights, which enable the government to take away patent protection for a product that is the result of government-funded research.
The letter asked the administration to use the rights for the cancer treatment Xtandi. Lawmakers said the drug costs $129,000 in the U.S., but only $39,000 in Japan and Sweden and $30,000 in Canada.
The administration denied the request, noting that march-in rights have never been used in such a way.
