A group of congressional lawmakers is accusing the pharmaceutical industry’s leading trade group of providing “misleading information” or simply failing to answer questions they posed this month about prescription drug pricing, the latest flare-up over the divisive pocketbook issue.
The lawmakers — including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), and others — had asked PhRMA to explain why prices rose an average of 5% in January for many top-selling medicines. They cited analyses conducted by academics at the University of Minnesota and Johns Hopkins University, and also sought information about various costs incurred by drug companies that boosted their prices.
The trade group responded on March 8 by arguing that it does not possess its members’ pricing strategies, which, in any event, are confidential. Moreover, the trade group also maintained that the academic analyses were based on “flawed data,” which consequently led the lawmakers to “fundamentally misleading conclusions about the cost of medicines.”
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