Drugmakers ring in the new year with higher drug prices

On Tuesday, more than three dozen pharmaceutical companies raised prices on hundreds of drugs in the U.S., and Allergan led the way, raising prices on 27 medicines by just under 10 percent, The Wall Street Journal reports, citing an analysis from Rx Savings Solutions. The average increase in drug list prices was 6.3 percent, and both brand-name drugmakers like Allergan and generics makers like Hikma Pharmaceuticals raised prices well above inflation. Allergan raised prices on about half its drugs, including the Alzheimer's medication Namenda, and Hikma increased prices for morphine, the anesthetic ketamine, and enalaprilat, a drug-pressure drug, the Journal notes.

There is increasing political pressure to tamp down pharmaceutical price hikes, but "the reason it can keep happening is there is no market check, no person or entity to bring reason to determining drug prices," said Michael Rea, CEO of Rx Savings Solutions, which sells software to companies and health plans to help them find the cheapest medicines.

House Democrats are expected to put pressure on drugmakers this year, and the Trump administration has proposed making pharmaceutical companies state their list prices in TV ads. Pfizer announced that it was freezing drug price increases over the summer in response to pressure from the Trump administration, but it will go back to raising prices on 41 of its drugs later this month, the Journal notes.

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