Want to understand drug pricing? Tell pharma to open its books
Like it or not, Martin Shkreli is the new face of pharma. And for an industry already struggling with an image problem over the rising costs of prescription drugs, companies are going to have a hard time distancing themselves from one of the most controversial men in America. The reason is a lack of transparency. Drug makers do not really want to explain how medicines are priced and, as a result, they have adopted an air of secrecy in which one cowboy can create havoc for an entire industry.
“The [Shkreli] episode is really an extreme manifestation of an attitude that has taken over the industry,” said Bernard Munos, a former corporate strategy adviser at Eli Lilly who is now a senior fellow at FasterCures, a medical research think tank. Most drug companies “are not raising prices by 5,000 percent, but large prices will leave patients with the same impression.”