Brent Saunders CEO of Actavis wants to continue to squeeze $300 a month from Alzheimer’s patients, because of course Actavis is all about the money not helping those with their deadly incurable disease.
New York Files an Antitrust Suit Against the Maker of an Alzheimer’s Drug
By ANDREW POLLACK
New York State’s attorney general filed an antitrust lawsuit on Monday seeking to stop a pharmaceutical company from forcing patients with Alzheimer’s disease to switch to a new version of a widely used drug. The lawsuit contends that the switch is designed to blunt competition from low-priced generic versions of the medication.
Forest Laboratories, now owned by Actavis, announced in February that it would stop selling the existing tablet form of the drug, Namenda, in favor of new extended-release capsules called Namenda XR that can be taken once a day instead of twice.
The tactic, called product hopping, is one of several ways brand-name drug manufacturers try to sidestep generic competition. Several antitrust cases have been brought against drug companies for product hopping, though mainly by pharmacies and health plans rather than government regulators.
Most generics are dispensed because state laws allow or require pharmacists to substitute a generic when a doctor prescribes the brand-name drug. But if the brand-name drug is different in even a minor way, such as the dosage, the pharmacists cannot make the substitution.
So product hopping can be a way to game the system, the Federal Trade Commission said in 2012 in an amicus brief filed in a private lawsuit involving the acne drug Doryx. It said a brand company could make “modest nontherapeutic changes to its product and effectively prevent generic competition, not because the reformulated product is preferred by consumers, but simply because it is different.”
The drug, known generically as memantine, had sales exceeding $1.5 billion in Forest’s last fiscal year, which ended in March. The drug costs about $300 a month, according to the website GoodRx.com.
"Forced switch" maneuver spurs lawsuit against drugmaker
ByJONATHAN LAPOOK
One of the patients affected by the maneuver is Mike Hitch, 54, who has early onset dementia and takes Namenda IR twice a day.
"I may have dementia and Alzheimer's and all that, but they're gonna make millions, billions of dollars off of it and get everybody switched to their XR version before they can even get hold of a generic," Hitch said.
Namenda generates about $1.5 billion in annual sales. So loss of Namenda's patent protection could translate to more than a billion dollars in lost revenue a year.
Like so many in the 0.01% Brent Saunders' greed knows no bounds. His amoral money driven view of the world isn't constrained by unbusinesslike values like morals or social justice. Treating the sick is just a means to an end for Saunders and Actavis shareholders (many amoral members of the 0.01% themselves).