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    Pharmapocalypse: Why Are Drug Prices Spiking?

    Prices for the top 20 drugs prescribed to seniors rose by an average of 12 percent every year from 2012 to 2017. Nothing about the medications changed, except their price tag.
    by Jessica Wapner May 04, 2018 4 minutes
    New drugs are often priced higher than their competitors, presumably because they're better than what's already out there. But now something strange is happening: When a medication enters the market, already approved competitors are repriced to match.
    PER_Pharma_01_148198089

    When Martin Shkreli, former CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, raised the price of Daraprim, which treats dangerous infections, from $13.50 to $750, the public was appalled.

    But lost in the outrage over predatory pricing was one crucial fact: What Shkreli did was completely legal—and common. Between 2012 and 2017, for example, the price for Nitrostat, which prevents and treats chest pain, increased by 477 percent, from $15.91 to $91.76. Nothing about the medication changed during those years—not its chemical formula, not its uses and not the manufacturing process. Pfizer, which sells Nitrostat, offered no explanation for the spike.

    In fact, according to a report published in March by the minority staff of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, prices for the top 20 drugs prescribed

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