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For: Luis Diaz Updated 31 Jan 2022, 10: 47 am EST
Rx Savings Solutions, a firm dedicated to the sale of software to help health plans choose the least expensive medications, announced that drug manufacturers list prices increased by 6.6% as of this 1230258622.
According to the firm, drugs to treat cancer , diabetes and other prescriptions had a moderate increase, until 20 January, date on which the study was concluded.
Rx Savings Solutions detailed that 150 drug manufacturers increased the prices of 866 products in all U.S. Drug price increases were in line with the general consumer inflation rate of 7%.
According to the report, drug manufacturers increase the prices of their products during the first weeks of a new year. Despite this trend, manufacturers promised to moderate the increases, for fear that Congress would impose regulations to control prices.
According to a report by FOX, drug manufacturers were more aggressive in raising prices in 2015 and 2016, when some drugs had increases of more than 10%, according to Ronny Gal, pharmaceutical industry analyst at Bernstein & Co.
Currently, the federal government seeks to ensure that people who have less economic capacity can have access to the necessary medicines to treat all types of ailments, without the need to spend large amounts of money.
The Build Back Better program, whose objective is to reduce existing inequalities and n United States, includes drug pricing provisions that would control the pricing power of manufacturers
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If approved by Congress, Build Back Better would limit price increases to the general rate of inflation in private and government health insurance programs. This would allow the government to negotiate the prices of certain high-cost medications covered by Medicare.
Rx Savings Solutions said the average increase of 6.6% excluded changes to different doses of the same drug. The report adds that during the same period last year, drugmakers increased prices by an average of 4.5% in 893 medicines.
The study found that Pfizer increased the prices of 219 medications by an average of 3.2%. According to Rx Savings Solutions, in some of the company’s best-selling drugs the increases were higher.
The price of Ibrance, the drug against Pfizer cancer rose 6.9%. The company also increased prices by 6.9% for its Prevnar vaccines, which protect against bacterial infections.
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