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Tuesday, February 14th, 2017

Opioid Overdose Treatment Prices Have Skyrocketed

Author:     Steve Williams
Source:     Care2
Publication Date:     February 13, 2017
 Link: Opioid Overdose Treatment Prices Have Skyrocketed
Stephan:   American healthcare is so awful, and so costly, and it seems on track to get even worse. Particularly offensive is the outrageous increases in drug prices. What I find so offensive is the naked greed of the pharmaceutical industry. We have a huge opioid epidemic, mostly rural and small Red value town Whites. An addiction plague that has killed 10s of thousands of people annually. The price for the  drug that can save people's lives, as this report details, has increased by nearly a factor of 8;  the inhumanity of what Kaléo Pharmaceuticals has done is just despicable.

Kaléo Pharmaceuticals has dramatically increased the cost of an easy-to-use injection device for the opioid overdose reversal drug known as naloxone, and lawmakers believe the price hike could put lives at risk.

U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-New York) and 31 other senators issued a stinging rebuke and call for answers on February 8 after the details of the price increase emerged.

The device, known as Evzio, was listed at $690 in 2014. It now reportedly costs $4,500. The drug company has previously said that it is increasing prices on products to meet the rising costs of manufacturing.

While it is true that naloxone has increased in price — now somewhere around $150 per 10cc vial — the senators pointed out that this does not come anywhere close to the near 700 percent increase on Evzio instituted by the company.

“At a time when Congress has worked to expand access to naloxone products and to assist state and local communities to equip first responders with this life-saving drug, this startling price hike is very concerning,” the senators wrote in a letter to Kaléo Pharmaceuticals CEO Spencer Williamson.

As is standard for this kind of product, […]

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