Senator Bernie Sanders sent out a tweet this past Friday.
The tweet led to an article about Ariad Pharmaceuticals, a company that owns a patent to an Iclusig chronic myeloid leukemia treatment. The writers at Stat News noticed that Ariad had raised the price of this treatment FOUR TIMES this past year, lifting the price of the leukemia treatment 27 percent—around $199,000 a year.
Ariad, however, is bucking the trend. In explaining the rising prices, an Ariad spokeswoman sent us a statement saying the company assesses “pricing based on a range of factors, including efforts to make sure that pricing appropriately reflects the benefit the therapy delivers to patients and to the healthcare system.
“We have substantial clinical data highlighting the benefits of Iclusig, as you know, which addresses an area of high unmet medical need in an ultra-orphan patient population of around 1,000 to 2,000 patients per year. We believe that our pricing actions also consistently reflect our significant investment in R&D and our ongoing commitment to the patient population we serve through our medicines.”
The article goes on to talk about the spotty health history of the drug in question and the subsequent rise in price over a short period of time that seems to be motivated by Wall Street’s “revenue and profit expectations.” Senator Sanders’ tweet had a powerful effect, throwing the stock into a freefall by the end of the day.
The shares slumped as much as 15 percent, the biggest intraday decline in more than a year, and traded down 12 percent to $11.51 at 2:52 p.m. in New York. A company representative didn’t immediately return a phone call and e-mail seeking comment.
Bloomberg says that the company had doubled its sales in the second quarter of this year.