(C) Colorado Newsline
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My patients can’t afford two crucial medications, and Big Pharma should be held accountable • Colorado Newsline [1]

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Date: 2024-06-06  

As a physician, I am encouraged and impressed with the work that Colorado’s Prescription Drug Affordability Board has done in reviewing the affordability of several medications. The board has helped determine the impact of these medications’ out-of-pocket costs on patients. In February, Colorado’s PDAB found Enbrel to be unaffordable after exhaustive research and testimony from patients and other health care stakeholders. This conclusion set the stage for an important next step — setting an upper payment limit that can help rein in the high costs of Enbrel.

Colorado’s PDAB should take similar action when it reviews two other prescription drugs this summer: Cosentyx and Stelara. Physicians prescribe these two drugs to help our patients manage autoimmune diseases such as Crohn’s disease, plaque psoriasis, and ulcerative colitis.

Without treatment, people with autoimmune diseases can develop severe and disabling pain. Over time, diseases like psoriatic arthritis can damage bones, leading to deformity and disability. Crohn’s disease, when left unmanaged, can cause bowel obstructions, abnormal connections between the intestines and other organs, anemia, and malnutrition. Ulcerative colitis can lead to colon cancer, osteoporosis, and, in children, delays in growth and development.

Yet autoimmune diseases like these can be managed successfully, allowing people with them to live full, productive, and even pain-free lives. Medications like Cosentyx and Stelara are important tools physicians use to help our patients manage diseases — and yet, too many of our patients simply can’t afford them.

In Colorado, Stelara costs as much as $1,400 out of pocket every eight weeks, while Cosentyx can cost as much as $2,400 out of pocket per month. For many of my patients who are already struggling with rising costs for food, housing, etc., these essential medications are unaffordable.

My fellow physicians and I are regularly frustrated and saddened to hear our patients tell us about the tough choices they have to make when household budgets are tight. Because of high prescription drug costs, my patients sometimes ration their medications so they can buy food or pay for gas. One in 10 Coloradans couldn’t afford to fill a prescription in 2021, and 40% of those folks said their health got worse.

My fellow physicians and I are regularly frustrated and saddened to hear our patients tell us about the tough choices they have to make when household budgets are tight.

Meanwhile, Stelara raked in nearly $11 billion — yes, billion with a “b” — for Johnson & Johnson in 2023, after it raised the price for a single syringe by $653. Cosentyx brought in $5 billion for Novartis, which raised the price of the drug 7.6% in 2023 in addition to a 7% hike in 2020. The CEOs of Johnson & Johnson and Novartis are also among the most lavishly paid in the corporate world: J&J CEO Joaquin Duato was paid $28.4 million in 2023, while his counterpart at Novartis, Vas Narasimhan, got a 21% pay raise, bumping his wages to $15.3 million in 2023.

To protect their profits, Big Pharma and drug company CEOs, not surprisingly, are fighting tooth and nail against Colorado’s PDAB and its work to determine whether drugs are unaffordable and whether an upper payment limit should be placed. Since 2020, J&J has spent $170,000 and Novartis, $200,000, on high-powered lobbyists in Colorado to sway policymakers and politicians to turn their backs on patients.

As Colorado’s PDAB reviews Stelara and Cosentyx, physicians like me urge them to review all the data, listen to patients and families who have been harmed by high drug costs, and determine that these two medications are unaffordable and rein in their costs. Coloradans deserve relief from debilitating, destructive autoimmune diseases and our policymakers should put their health ahead of Big Pharma’s massive profits.

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[1] Url: https://coloradonewsline.com/2024/06/06/patients-medications-big-pharma/

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