The New York Times editorial board laid out five questions the Senate Finance Committee should ask the seven pharmaceutical companies testifying at a hearing Feb. 26.
A breakdown of those five questions:
1. How are list prices determined? Senators should ask executives to explain their strategies in determining list prices, including who has a say and why the formulas haven't been made public. The editorial board writes they should ask Olivier Brandicourt, CEO of Sanofi, why the list price of insulin continues to rise annually.
2. What is a fair profit for lifesaving products? Often, pharmaceutical executives say that without a profit from one drug, they cannot afford to manufacture the next drug. While this is a fair point, many drugmakers enjoy billions of dollars in profits, the board wrote.
3. How much does R&D cost; where do those dollars go? A main argument from drugmakers is that research and development is expensive and there are many drug failures between each drug success. However, critics of the industry say that a lot of basic research is funded by the National Institutes of Health and that R&D costs are not large enough to explain the high drug prices.
4. Why would a drug need 100 patents? While patent protections enable drugmakers to regain the money they spend on development and marketing, experts say pharmaceutical companies are gaming the patent system. For example, Humira, an arthritis treatment made by AbbVie, has applied for 247 patents and is protected by 100 of them.
5. What will you change? While pharma execs are expected to deflect some of the blame elsewhere on the healthcare system, the finance committee must focus on what the drug industry will do to lower costs for patients.
Read the full opinion piece here.