After a drug maker raised the price of a Opioid overdose reversal drug by 600%, a senate investigation into the matter made them reconsider their decision.
Ohio Senator Rob Portman co-chairs the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations which looked into the drug company “kaleo” who over a span of four years raised the price for their Naloxone auto-injector called “EVZIO” by 600%, from $575 to $4,100. The investigation found that the drug manufacture was trying to capitalize on the growing Opioid crisis, which saw around 72 thousand American died from drug overdoses last year. Portman said Medicare and Medicaid were paying the inflated prices for people to get the drug. But a month after the results of their investigation was released and a 60 minute story on the issue, “kaleo” reduce the drug price from $4,100 to just $178 dollars, lower then the original price. Portman says Washington needs to look at the laws regarding drug prices to prevent this from happening again.
“Under our current medicare laws, if a doctor says something is medically necessary. They have to pay whatever the drug company is requiring," says Portman. "I think that is just wrong, there should be competition, there should be an ability to look behind that and say ‘Gosh is this 600% increase? Are they gouging consumers?’ I think it’s a loophole i the law, I think that the company cleverly used that loophole and we need to close that loophole.”
Allen county officials announced a little over a week age, that the number of drug overdose deaths have dropped from 39 in 2017 to just 1 so far this year. They attribute part of the reason to the opioid reversing drug Naloxone.
