Chairman Collins, Ranking Member McCaskill Announce Third Hearing in Senate Aging Committee’s Bipartisan Investigation
WASHINGTON, D.C.—Senate Aging Committee Chairman Susan Collins and Ranking Member Claire McCaskill will hold the third hearing in a series the Committee is conducting to investigate the sudden, aggressive price spikes of decades-old Rx drugs on Wednesday April 27th at 2:30 PM.
Michael Pearson, the CEO of Valeant Pharmaceuticals, has received a subpoena from the Senate Aging Committee and is among the witnesses expected to testify at the hearing.
The Committee held the first hearing of the series in December 2015. From the beginning, the bipartisan investigation has focused on pharmaceutical companies that operate more like hedge funds than traditional pharmaceutical companies.
The second hearing, held on March 17th, took an in-depth look inside the monopoly business models of Turing and Retrophin, both formerly headed by Martin Shkreli, that acquired and then dramatically increased the price of the drug Daraprim last year, from $13.50 to $750 a pill.
This year alone, Americans are expected to spend more than $328 billion on prescription drugs. Of this amount, individuals will pay about $50 billion out-of-pocket. The federal government will pick up another $110 billion in payments through Medicare, Medicaid, Veterans Affairs, and other programs.
