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Major pharmaceutical companies raised drug prices exponentially by hundreds or thousands of percent to boost profits and executives’ bonuses, “taking full advantage” of Medicare rules, a House panel said Wednesday. The House Oversight and Reform Committee this morning reported the findings, the first from its 18-month investigation into a dozen drug companies' pricing practices, ahead of two days of hearings with the manufacturers. (Owermohle, 9/30)

The House Oversight Committee released two major reports Wednesday that expose the internal strategies used by drug makers Celgene and Teva to repeatedly jack up the price of their blockbuster drugs revlimid and copaxone. The reports, which are the culmination of an 18-month investigation based on internal company documents, outline in vivid detail how both drug makers raised their prices at will and plotted to  keep lower-cost alternatives off the market. (Florko, 9/30)

Kaiser Health News: Sky-High Drug Prices Driven By Pharma Profits, House Dems Charge

Those costs have little to do with research and development or industry efforts to help people afford medication, as drug companies often claim, according to the probe. “It’s true, many of these pharmaceutical industries have come up with lifesaving and pain-relieving medications, but they’re killing us with the prices they charge,” Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) said as the hearings began Wednesday. He added that “uninhibited pricing power has transformed America’s pain into pharma’s profit.” (McAuliff, 9/30)

A handful of newly elected Democrats, including Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Katie Porter of California put drug industry CEOs on the defensive Wednesday like they’ve never been before. The trio of freshman lawmakers used an Oversight Committee hearing to press the CEOs of Teva, Celgene and Bristol-Myers Squibb — painfully and directly — on the results of an 18-month investigation into the pricing of two drugs: Teva’s Multiple Sclerosis drug copaxone and Bristol-Myers Squibb’s multiple myeloma drug revlimid. (Florko, 9/30)

Payments to hospitals and physicians — not  drug prices — are the main reason the U.S. spends so much more on healthcare than other wealthy countries, despite much of the national conversation around healthcare spending being focused on drug costs, according to a report released by the Peterson Center on Healthcare and the Kaiser Family Foundation. The U.S. spends about twice as much per person on healthcare than other wealthy countries, with an average of $10,637 per capita in 2018 compared to $5,527 in other countries.  (Anderson, 9/30)