January 26, 2015
By Riley McDermid, BioSpace.com Breaking News Sr. Editor
The results of BioSpace’s second Biotech Temperature Poll are in and the masses have spoken: Most of the respondents polled said they believe drug companies are in for a world of hurt when it comes to negotiating drug prices in 2015, as the war of hefty price tags moves into cancer pricing as well.
When asked if Kite Pharma will be able to negotiate prices without giving a discount to payers, a whopping 80 percent said no—as sign that drug companies should be prepared for hard charging tactics at the bargaining table this year.
When asked if Gilead Sciences, Inc. gave a discount to payers who gave it exclusivity earlier this month, an astonishing 92 percent said yes.
Most respondents believed that drug makers will need to provide discounts in exchange for exclusivity, but the size of those discounts remained a matter of some dispute. Of those, 29 percent of respondents said any discount would be 20 percent, 26 percent said it would be 30 percent, 18 percent said it would be below 30 percent, 15 percent said it would be greater than 10 percent, while 13 percent said it would be 10 percent.
The majority of the respondents in this week’s poll were from the United States, with 87 percent of the 136 participants based in America. Three percent hailed from Canada, while the rest hailed from a host of countries including Belgium, Germany, Italy, Ireland, Switzerland, Sweden, Lebanon, Portugal and the United Kingdom. Three percent of respondents declined to identify their country of domicile.
For states, California led the pack, with 28 percent of the poll’s respondents based in that state. New York followed with 8 percent, then New Jersey and Massachusetts at 7 percent. The rest were distributed throughout the U.S.
