PAY FOR DELAY

Abstract

AS PART OF ITS EFFORT to slash health care costs, the Obama Administration is urging Congress to stop brand-name pharmaceutical companies from paying their generics rivals to keep lower priced equivalent medicines off the market. The antitrust arm of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has been battling these agreements, saying they enable drugmakers to preserve their monopolies on certain products and cost consumers hundreds of millions of dollars in higher prescription prices. “The enormous costs that result from unwarranted delays in generic entry burden consumers, employers, state and local governments, and federal programs already struggling to contain spiraling costs,” FTC Commissioner J. Thomas Rosch told the House Energy & Commerce Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade & Consumer Protection at a recent hearing. Congressional action to prohibit these “pay for delay” agreements between brand manufacturers and their generics competitors is “both appropriate and timely,” Rosch said. “Agreements to eliminate ...