Talk About Déjà Vu: Senators Set To Re-Enact Drug Price Hearing Of 60 Years Ago

(By Jay Hancock for Kaiser Health News)

Kenneth Frazier, CEO of pharma giant Merck, is set to face senators Tuesday who say drug costs are “sky-high” and “out of control.”

But Frazier doesn’t need new talking points. Sixty years ago, a different panel of senators grilled a different Merck boss about the same problem.

To a striking degree, the subjects likely to surface Tuesday — high drug prices and profits, limited price transparency, aggressive marketing, alleged patent abuse and mediocre, “me-too” drugs — are identical to the issues senators investigated decades ago, historical transcripts show.  Continue reading article here…

Kaiser Health News is a nonprofit national health policy news service that is part of the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

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