ICER un­veils lat­est re­port on 'un­sup­port­ed' drug price in­creas­es

The drug pric­ing watch­dog known as the In­sti­tute for for Clin­i­cal and Eco­nom­ic Re­view on Mon­day un­veiled its an­nu­al re­port on what it says are drug price in­creas­es un­sup­port­ed by new clin­i­cal da­ta.

But some in the in­dus­try are push­ing back on the re­port, which pulls da­ta from 2021 and 2022. For Ab­b­Vie’s megablock­buster Hu­mi­ra (adal­i­mum­ab), for in­stance, biosim­i­lar com­pe­ti­tion has dri­ven the price down sig­nif­i­cant­ly since these in­creas­es were made.

David Rind ICER

ICER said it se­lect­ed its 10 drugs for the 2023 list from the top 250 drugs by 2022 US sales rev­enue and for which whole­sale ac­qui­si­tion cost (WAC) price in­creas­es that ex­ceed­ed the con­sumer price in­dex, plus 2%. The drugs that made the top 10 list had net price in­creas­es (vet­ted by man­u­fac­tur­ers) that con­tributed to the largest in­creas­es in US spend­ing.

ICER said these in­creas­es among the top 8 ac­count­ed for $1.27 bil­lion in ad­di­tion­al costs over one year, which was com­pa­ra­ble with years past.

“We con­tin­ue to see list price in­creas­es above in­fla­tion for many of the most cost­ly drugs,” David Rind, ICER’s chief med­ical of­fi­cer, said in a state­ment. “When we look fur­ther at those drugs whose net price in­creas­es led to the largest in­creas­es in US ex­pen­di­tures, many had no sub­stan­tial new ev­i­dence to sup­port such price in­creas­es.”

But oth­ers in the in­dus­try have raised ques­tions about this par­tic­u­lar re­port and its rel­e­vance.

“This is a re­port that should be dis­con­tin­ued for a num­ber of rea­sons,” John O’Brien, pres­i­dent and CEO of the Na­tion­al Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal Coun­cil, told End­points News in an in­ter­view. “Old da­ta that con­tains method­olog­i­cal short­com­ings re­al­ly does a dis­ser­vice.”

An­oth­er im­por­tant piece miss­ing from the re­port: CMS re­bates — re­quired to be paid to the gov­ern­ment for any drug for which the price ris­es faster than in­fla­tion — went in­to ef­fect in Jan­u­ary 2023, just af­ter the da­ta from the ICER re­port cuts off.