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Sanders and Cummings blast Drug Company obstruction of Generic Drug price hike probe
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee, and Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.), the Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, sent letters to Heritage Pharmaceuticals, Mylan N.V., and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd., opening an investigation into the companies’ apparent coordinated obstruction of a 2014 inquiry into the way their companies raised prices on lifesaving generic druags.
“Not only did your company’s apparent obstruction undermine our investigation,” Sanders and Cummings wrote to each of the pharmaceutical CEOs, “but it may have caused further harm to patients and health care providers by delaying the discovery of evidence about the companies’ price-fixing.”
In 2014, Sanders and Cummings sent letters to the companies requesting information and documents regarding price increases of generic medicines. The prices of some of these drugs had risen by as much as 8,281 percent between October 2013 and April 2014. Heritage, Mylan, and Teva executives allegedly played a central role in the scheme.
According to the complaint filed by Connecticut and 43 other states in May, the pharmaceutical companies coordinated to inflate the prices of several drugs that were the subject of Sanders’ and Cummings’ 2014 investigation.
Connecticut officials obtained an email sent on October 3, 2014, from a representative ofHeritage’s outside counsel to then-Heritage Pharmaceuticals Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Glazer discussing how Teva, Mylan, and Heritage planned to coordinate their responses to the congressional requests. The Heritage representative wrote that “the consensus at this point is that the responses will be ‘polite f-u’ letters.” The companies planned “to schedule a conference call to coordinate the response and make sure everyone is on the same page,” according to the email.
“Obstructing or evading a Congressional investigation, including withholding or concealing information, is a violation of federal law,” wrote Sanders and Cummings to the three drug companies in response.
Sanders and Cummings renewed their original request for documents and requested information regarding the companies’ apparent efforts to stonewall the 2014 investigation, in order to obtain a more detailed understanding of what specific actions took place to thwart the ability of Congress to enact legislative reform, and jeopardize patients’ access to generic drugs.
“We are writing once again to obtain the information requested in 2014,” wrote Sanders and Cummings, requesting responses by August 28, 2019. “This information is critical to our investigation, and necessary to develop and pursue legislative policies that address anti-competitive behavior in the generic pharmaceutical industry.”
Click here to read today’s letter to Heritage Pharmaceuticals.
Click here to read today’s letter to Mylan N.V.
Click here to read today’s letter to Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd.
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Hanania also writes about Middle East issues for the Arab News, and The Arab Daily News criticizing government policies in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Hanania was named "Best Ethnic American Columnist" by the New America Media in November 2007, and is the 2009 recipient of the SPJ National Sigma Delta Chi Award for column writing.
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