Is The U.S. Biopharma Industry Headed For A Turning Point In 2017?

Three months ago, Brent Saun­ders fired a shot across the bow of the USS Big Pharma, pledg­ing to limit Al­ler­gan’s an­nual price in­crease on its port­fo­lio drugs to no more than sin­gle-digit per­cent­age hikes each year. On Mon­day, the new US pres­i­dent of di­a­betes spe­cial­ist Novo Nordisk took that pledge. And 2017 is shap­ing up as a po­ten­tial turn­ing point in the heated pub­lic ar­gu­ment over drug prices in the US.

“We rec­og­nize that peo­ple with di­a­betes are find­ing it harder to pay for their health­care, in­clud­ing the med­i­cines we make,” noted Jakob Riis, Novo’s US pres­i­dent, in a post. “As a com­pany fo­cused on im­prov­ing the lives of peo­ple with di­a­betes, this is not ac­cept­able.”