Despite the crisis that the pandemic has created, drug companies have conducted business as usual hiking prices of 245 drugs since the start of the year, on par with prior years. More than 75% of the 245 price increases are related to COVID-19.
- The pandemic has put people with chronic diseases and acute health conditions at high risk of severe illness or death
- Common medications like Acetaminophen, Ibuprofen, and Reglan used to treat the symptoms of mild cases of COVID-19 for millions of Americans that don’t require hospitalization gave pharma and opportunity for price hikes
- Similarly, drugs used to take care of hospitalized patients with severe cases experienced increased demand and drug companies have not missed a bit on sizable price hikes
Although some of the hikes can be argued as the result of disrupted manufacturing supply chains, many are nothing but opportunistic hikes on the face of demand increases. Over the past 6 months, 44 inpatient drugs – including 20 essential critical care drugs – experienced significant price increases. The average price increase was 23.8%.
Source: https://patientsforaffordabledrugs.org/2020/06/28/covid-price-hikes-report/
