Senate investigation: drugmaker harmed patients, profited, with asthma inhaler switch

Most likely outcome. No justice is to be found with this DOJ.

Like the Epi Pen fiasco

You're right, insurance companies should have covered the alternative drugs right away. The Senator in this video was saying all the right things, but it seemed like the CNN reporter wasn't quite sure what was going on or how these schemes worked- or if it was just that the editing on the video was bad (or both). > This is a tough one for me to parse because if I'm understanding the reporting, Congress instituted a new rule about rebates that meant GSK would have to sell Flovent at a loss No, they didn't have to sell at a loss. That's where the CNN reporter and editing team did a poor job of explaining things. The reason that GSK was *potentially* going to sell at a loss (which they would never do) was because one of the government's penalties is tied to price increases (accounting for inflation). So, if GSK did not cut the price of Flovent (for some asinine reason), then they would get nailed for the "you're charging too much based on what you first sold it for" penalty. There is also a guaranteed, roughly 20% rebate they have to pay to Medicaid to sell the drug anyway. So, if they have the 20% default fee, proceed not to drop their price of Flovent, then the price increase fee would be like 80-120% or whatever it may be. Like, if they first said their price when it came out (bare bones price only Medicaid gets if that) was $30 (in today's dollars) an inhaler, and then they now charge $300 or whatever- then the penalty is going to hammer them. But you know what? If they slashed the bare price to $30, then they would only be paying zero dollars in the price increase penalty. I'm not sure what it costs GSK to produce an inhaler of Flovent- but if they look at what Europe charges- it would give a clue. Even if they charged $50, and paid a $20 increase penalty (rebate donation to Medicaid or whatever), they could still make a good profit on Flovent. And I'm accounting for all costs- not just the fluticasone or the nifty inhaler- but overhead and such. When GSK says "we will lose $30 a unit sold if we keep the $300 price" it's not a sympathetic situation. They could, you know, drop the price to avoid the gigantic penalty. But instead, they made a deal with some other smaller drug company, make the medication and inhaler *for that company*, and make a ton of money off of that partnership. Now, the CNN video kind of did a bad job of pointing out that the exact same active drug with the exact same inhaler was available when Flovent was gone in 2024, but you can't win them all. The issue there is that insurance companies took too long to cover what was the exact same thing. The mother in the video, for example, *could have* received the exact same drug at the drop of the hat- it would have been $200 a month out of pocket though. Finally, the video hinted at the crappy aspect that the U.S. taxpayer is now paying $500M a year for the "new" version GSK makes with its partner. If GSK had just dropped their price this could all have been avoided.

Or, Congress could fund the production of the older drug and sell it at cost. If the major manufacturers of drugs want to do slight formula tweaks (like with insulin) every time a patent expires it seems like a logical move. Like with calrx producing 3 insulin options for Californians which are capped at 11 dollars. And that’s a complex biological, not a classic generic that’s easier to manufacture.