Top 20 Pay-For-Delay Drugs

OSPIRG

Too often, consumers are forced to shoulder a heavy financial burden, or even go without needed medicine, due to the high cost of brand-name drugs. Our research indicates that one significant cause is the practice called “pay for delay,” which inflates the drug prices paid by tens of millions of Americans.

In a pay-for-delay deal, a brand-name drug company pays off a would-be competitor to delay it from selling a generic version of the drug. Without any competition, the brand-name company can continue demanding high prices for its drug.

This list of 20 drugs known to be impacted by pay-for-delay deals represents the tip of the iceberg. Annual reports by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) indicate that generic versions of as many as 142 brand-name drugs have been delayed by pay-for-delay arrangements between drug manufacturers since 2005.

However, because the details of these deals rarely become public, consumers have largely been kept in the dark about the extent of the problem. Information about these twenty specific drugs affected by pay-for-delay deals has been made public thanks to legal challenges brought by the FTC, consumer class action lawsuits, research by legal experts, and public disclosures by drug makers.

Key findings of our analysis of these 20 drugs impacted by pay-for-delay deals:

• This practice has held back generic medicines used by patients with a wide range of serious or chronic conditions, ranging from cancer and heart disease, to depression and bacterial infection.
• These payoffs have delayed generic drugs for five years, on average, and as long as nine years.
• These brand-name drugs cost 10 times more than their generic equivalents, on average, and as much as 33 times more.
• Combined, these brand-name drug companies have made an estimated $98 billion in total sales of these drugs while the generic versions were delayed.