Drug Maker’s Donations to Co-Pay Charity Face Scrutiny
By ANDREW POLLACK, NYT
As drug prices have soared in recent years and insurers have increased co-payments, a new type of charity has blossomed to fill a vital niche — helping patients pay the steep out-of-pocket costs for their medicines.
But the largest of these co-payment assistance charities, the Chronic Disease Fund, is now in turmoil after questions have arisen about its relationship with a pharmaceutical company that is itself under investigation for marketing practices.
The practice is casting a spotlight on what has long been an open secret: The bulk of the contributions to these charities come from the pharmaceutical companies themselves. The foundations not only help hundreds of thousands of patients a year, they also raise drug company sales and profits.
After all, if a patient cannot afford out-of-pocket costs of $5,000 for a $100,000-a-year drug, the drug company gets nothing. But if the manufacturer pays the $5,000, the patient gets the drug and the company receives $95,000 from the patient’s insurance company or Medicare.
(More here.)
As drug prices have soared in recent years and insurers have increased co-payments, a new type of charity has blossomed to fill a vital niche — helping patients pay the steep out-of-pocket costs for their medicines.
But the largest of these co-payment assistance charities, the Chronic Disease Fund, is now in turmoil after questions have arisen about its relationship with a pharmaceutical company that is itself under investigation for marketing practices.
The practice is casting a spotlight on what has long been an open secret: The bulk of the contributions to these charities come from the pharmaceutical companies themselves. The foundations not only help hundreds of thousands of patients a year, they also raise drug company sales and profits.
After all, if a patient cannot afford out-of-pocket costs of $5,000 for a $100,000-a-year drug, the drug company gets nothing. But if the manufacturer pays the $5,000, the patient gets the drug and the company receives $95,000 from the patient’s insurance company or Medicare.
(More here.)
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