Companies often worked not to develop breakthrough medicine but to take an existing product and “modify the original drug just enough to get a patentable alternative,” said Dr. Frederick Meyers, a pharmacology professor at what later became the University of California-San Francisco.
In contrast to the nonstop consumer TV commercials of today, ads for prescription medicines in 1960 were aimed at doctors and hospitals, appearing in medical journals. Even those were deemed aggressive. A committee staffer dumped out a huge pile of samples, ads, and flyers that a Minnesota doctor said he had received in only one month.
Maybe if the companies spent less on ads, armies of salesmen and “expensive stock options” for executives, Sen. Kefauver suggested, “you could lower the price of drugs, too.”
Senators proposed sweeping solutions.
Sen. Kefauver’s draft bill would have withheld patents for modified drugs unless the new molecule gave a therapeutic response “significantly greater” than the original. It would have promoted competition by allowing anybody to license and sell a patented drug, in return for royalties paid to the patent holder, after three years.
One expert urged the government to publish an official list of patented drugs and their generic equivalents along with prices so everybody could see what they cost.
None of this happened. The industry fought back. Any legislation seemed doomed until the tragedy of thalidomide, a pill taken for morning sickness that produced deformities in babies, prompted lawmakers to act.
But the Kefauver Harris Amendment of 1962, which set requirements for medical trials and laid ground for the modern drug-approval process, did little to control cost.
There was no need to limit drug prices, Austin Smith, president of the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association, told the Kefauver committee. Attempts to prove excessive pharma profits were “doomed to failure,” he said. Drug prices were rising more slowly than consumer prices generally, Smith said.
Smith’s counterpart today is Stephen Ubl, who runs what is now known as the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. He takes a similar line, one that is likely to be repeated on Feb. 26. “Drug prices are rapidly decelerating,” Ubl tweeted last month.
Kaiser Health News is a nonprofit national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation that is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.