Presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders may be running for the highest office in the land, but he’s still attending to his duties in the Senate.
The senator from Vermont is teaming up with Democrats in an attempt to get the National Institutes of Health to override a patent in order to lower prices on the drug, Xtandi. For that to happen, the lawmakers must first get the White House to sign off on a public hearing.
Xtandi is a drug used to treat prostate cancer and costs much more in the United States than in other countries. It can cost three or four times less around the world.
In a signed letter to the heads of the NIH and HHS, lawmakers argued that because the federal government helped create Xtandi, it is only right that the drug be priced fairly. The cancer drug was based on research done at UCLA with the aid of federal grants funded by taxpayers.
Astellas Pharma, Inc, which holds the patent on Xtandi, disagrees. One spokesperson for the company said that 81 percent of privately insured people paid $25 or less out of pocket each month and 79 percent of Medicare patients paid nothing out of pocket each month. The Astellas rep also said that for eligible patients who do not have insurance or are underinsured and have an annual adjusted household income of $100,000 or less, Astellas provides Xtandi for free.
The cost of prescriptions and other drugs have come back into the news in recent months. Many will remember Martin Shkreli, the CEO who caused a huge uproar when his company increased the price of a vital AIDS drug by 5000 percent.
Unfortunately for Shkreli, being the most hated man in America comes with a price, especially when you’ve broken the law. It remains to be seen if the case with Xtandi will also have a fulfilling conclusion.
Featured image via Flickr by Jamie available under a Creative Commons Generic 2.0 Attribution Generic license.
