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Remember when that pharmaceutical trade group launched a flashy ad campaign to convince consumers that they were different from the price-gouging Shkrelis of the industry? Well, one of their members just took an old, cheap drug and priced a year’s worth of it at $89,000.
The steroid drug, deflazacort, which treats Duchenne muscular dystrophy, has been approved overseas for years and is sold as a generic. Duchenne affects about 15,000 people in the US. Families here have been importing a year’s worth for around $1,200.
But Marathon Pharmaceuticals (a member of the PhRMA trade group) finally got it FDA-approved Thursday under an “orphan drug” status, which is for drugs that treat rare diseases. Under that status, Marathon has exclusive rights to sell deflazacort in the US for seven years.
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Source: Ars Technica – Old, generic drug for rare disease gets new price tag: ,000 per year