Increase prices (where they can).
Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline, the world's largest drugmakers, are raising US prices to boost revenue as prescriptions slow on their best-selling medicines.
The companies increased U.S. wholesale prices about 9 percent on their 10 top-selling medicines in 2007, more than twice the 4.2 percent rise in the U.S. consumer price index, according to data collected by Thomson Corp., the Toronto-based financial-information provider. Industry wide, prices have climbed 50 percent since 2003, according to AARP, the advocacy group for the elderly.
If not for the increases, Pfizer's U.S. revenue would have fallen more than the 10 percent drop posted last year when prescriptions declined for its best-seller, the cholesterol pill Lipitor. Glaxo's price bump kept its U.S. sales from dropping more than 10 percent. Inflating wholesale charges isn't a sustainable strategy for masking a company's failure to discover novel drugs, industry critics say.
``The only way they can keep up their financial picture is to raise prices on the current drugs,'' said John Rother, director of public policy for AARP, a non-profit group based in Washington that represents people aged 50 and over. ``That is a short-term strategy, but that seems to be what they are doing because they don't have new products.''
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