Escalating Drug Prices Not a Concern for All

President Barack Obama, prominent cancer doctors and health insurers are all warning about the need to control the surging prices of new drugs.

Drugmakers and their investors aren’t acting worried at all, especially when it comes to cancer medicine. In the wake of AbbVie Inc’s $21 billion pact to buy the maker of a $100,000-a-year leukemia drug, the pharmaceutical industry and Wall Street are signaling they don’t expect the brakes on pricing any time soon in the oncology field. Companies that are developing cancer drugs rose in reaction to both the deal and regulatory approval of a $12,500-a-month treatment from Bristol-Myers Squibb Co for treating a lung malignancy.

“Oncology is a different ballgame,” AbbVie Chief Executive Officer Rick Gonzalez said in an interview. “You’re talking about life and death for these patients, it is not something you want to randomly start to manage in a way that would create risk for those patients.”

Link to the complete article in Bloomberg: http://bloom.bg/1AXvtBI