December 2, 2014 – Generic Crisis

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Anchor lead: How will stratospheric generic drug prices affect you? Elizabeth Tracey reports

The federal government has finally made it official: they’re asking purveyors of generic drugs to explain the almost unfathomable increase in many of their prices.  Landon King, executive vice dean of medicine at Johns Hopkins, says it’s not a moment too soon.

King: That it’s now happening in the generic drug market, hundreds and thousands of percent increase in prices in drugs that have been known and used for decades in some cases is really putting a different level of strain on the ability of patients to get those drugs, and hospitals and health systems to provide those drugs.   :23

King says no one can account for this increase in any believable way.

King: The rationale for that is not at all evident, the need for that in a real business sense is not at all evident, the implications of that for access, for affordability, is immediately evident.   :13

For now, King recommends that anyone who is struggling to buy generics talk to their provider.  At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.