House report accuses AbbVie of price gouging

A recent report from the House Oversight and Reform Committee concluded that AbbVie (NYSE:ABBV) aggressively increased prices of popular drugs, including the bestseller Humira (adalimumab), which brought in close to $20 billion last year. Approximately $16 billion of those sales were in the U.S.

In recent years, the company also repeatedly increased the price of the small-molecule drug Imbruvica (ibrutinib), according to the report, which is the result of a two-year investigation. AbbVie jointly markets Imbruvica with Janssen (NYSE:JNJ).

An annual supply of Humira costs approximately $77,000, while a year’s worth of Imbruvica is $181,529, according to the House report. The price of the latter has increased 82% since the drug launched in 2013. Outside of the U.S., the cost of Humira has fallen in recent years.

“AbbVie pursued a variety of tactics to increase drug sales while raising prices for Americans, including exploiting the patent system to extend it…

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