VIAGRA lo sube...: Incrementa precio en un 27.5%

For the second time this year, Pfizer has made substantial price hikes on some of its medicines, a move that disregards blistering criticism of the pharmaceutical industry over the cost of prescription drugs.

Specifically, the drug maker raised prices for 91 medicines on June 1 by between 5 percent and 13 percent, according to The Financial Times. This marks the second time this year that Pfizer boosted prices and, when factoring in price hikes made last January, the company has raised prices an average of 20 per cent this year.

As an example, the paper pointed to the average wholesale price of a 100 mg tablet of Viagra, which was $57.94 at the start of the year, but now costs $73.85 after two consecutive increases. As a result, the list price for the little blue pill, as it is known, has jumped 27.5 percent this year. 
 
The move comes as more Americans complain about the toll that price hikes are having on their wallets and the Pfizer price hikes are certain to fuel further controversy, especially since the company refused to agree to limit annual increase to single digits. 
Some drug makers — Allergan (read “Allergan's Brent Saunders' Manifesto on Drug Prices & Access”) Ver
and Novo Nordisk (read “Novo Nordisk President Pledges to Limit List Prices of Drugs But Cannot Guarantee Market Price”) Ver
— have taken this vow and Sanofi is linking prices hikes to medical inflation, but these notion have failed to catch on in a meaningful way.

Instead, Pfizer chief executive Ian Read has argued that medicines should be judged on their value (read “Ian Read – Bean Counter Pfizer CEO – Won’t Commit to Keep a Lid on Drug Price Increases”). Ver

But at an industry conference last year, he appeared riled when Regeneron chief executive Len Schleifer chastised drug makers for boosting prices on a regular basis, and appeared to single out price hikes that Pfizer took over a six-month period — 8.8 percent and 10.4 percent, on average — in 2016 (“Oh Snap! Regeneron CEO Says What to Pfizer CEO Ian Read???”). Ver

Pfizer may have hard a time explaining how the value of so many of their medicines increased over such a short period of time to justify such price hikes, especially given public anger.