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House lawmakers put AbbVie pharmaceuticals CEO Richard Gonzalez in the hot seat this week over concerns that the drugmaker behind top-selling medications exploited the U.S. patent system to stave off competition.
The Oversight Committee hearing was Congress’s
latest effort to crack down on pharmaceutical industry price-gouging.
“Our investigation has revealed that the justifications the pharmaceutical industry offers for why they need to raise prices simply do not hold water,” New York Democrat and House Oversight Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney said in the May 18 hearing. “Our investigation also uncovered evidence that AbbVie … engaged in anti-competitive practices to extend its monopoly pricing.”
Published May 18, 2021 Win McNamee via Getty Images
Patents protecting AbbVie s inflammatory disease drug Humira in Europe expired two and half years ago, forcing the company to sharply cut its prices as low-cost competitors flooded the region.
But in the U.S., the world s top-selling drug is protected until 2023 due to broader intellectual property protection and legal settlements with would-be rivals. AbbVie, meanwhile, has kept raising prices.
The company s so-called patent thicket for Humira emerged as the biggest villain in a hearing Tuesday before the House Oversight and Investigations Committee, suggesting an area of potential agreement between Democrats and Republicans on drug pricing legislation.
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House lawmakers on both sides of the aisle pummeled AbbVie CEO Richard Gonzalez for raising the price of two widely used drugs and for the company s legally questionable tactics to head off competition from biosimilars, despite pulling in healthy profits.
Much of Tuesday s House Committee on Oversight and Reform hearing centered around two issues: the risks and benefits of Medicare price negotiation and potential abuse of the patent system.
Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) charged that Gonzalez and other AbbVie executives were actively targeting the U.S. for price increases while lowering prices in other countries.
AbbVie charges $77,000 for a year s supply of adalimumab (Humira), which is 470% more than what it charged when the drug was first launched in 2003. A single syringe of the tumor necrosis factor (TNF) blocking agent costs over $1,000 more in the U.S. compared to some other countries, including Canada, Japan, Korea, and the U.K.
Sarah Silbiger via Getty Images
The Biden administration s call to waive patent rights for coronavirus vaccines sparked vociferous opposition from drugmakers and pharma industry groups, which quickly claimed the move will discourage future drug research and do little to increase supply.
Activists, which have pressured the administration for months on the issue, argue a waiver is needed to begin removing hurdles standing in the way of manufacturing vaccines in Asia, Africa and South America. The waiver is the first significant step, said Tahir Amin, co-founder of I-MAK, a group that advocates for pharmaceutical patent reform. It creates a risk-free environment for other manufacturers to at least attempt to reverse engineer vaccines.
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